


A Dream Carved in Stone

by diadelphous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dark Magic, Drinking, Espionage, Explicit Language, F/M, Minor Character Death, Romance, Sexual Content, Smoking, Violence, first wizarding war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-08
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 19:54:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 56
Words: 101,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diadelphous/pseuds/diadelphous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: When an unmarried Lily Evans joins the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore gives her a simple mission: meet with the Death Eater Severus Snape and tell him what she's done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lily

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted on ff.net.
> 
> As noted, this story is an AU. It has a couple of points of departure. The big one is that Severus never called Lily a mudblood when they were at school, which means they stayed friends up until the point he joined the Death Eaters. The other one is that Lily reciprocated his feelings but never acted on them.

Lily joined the Order in October, two weeks before Halloween. James Potter was there at her inaugural meeting with his pretty blonde wife and their baby boy.

"Evans!" he said when he walked in and saw her. He blinked a couple of times, shook his head. "Lily, I mean - it's good to see you."

"James," she said, and for a moment they stood there looking at each other, not speaking. Lily waited for him to say something about Sev, but he didn't.

"How've you been?" he asked.

"As well as possible these days." She flicked her eyes over to his wife -Joanie, the Hufflepuff seeker he'd been seeing during their final year at Hogwarts. Lily'd heard the rumors about the pregnancy, of course, everyone had. The boy looked about a year old. Lily could count back. She wondered if he'd been conceived in the astronomy tower or behind the rose bushes, and then she wondered why she cared.

"Joanie," she said, turning to James' wife. "It's lovely to see you."

"Yes, you too." Joanie smiled and shifted her hips. The boy blinked at Lily. "This is Lawrence. Larry."

Lily smiled at him, but something must have shown on her face, because James said, "We don't like leaving him alone. You know."

"Oh. Of course."

"We figured this is probably the safest place -" James and Joanie looked at each other and smiled nervously, and Lily suddenly felt for both of them. There had been no love lost between James and herself during their seven years at school, but she couldn't imagine bringing a baby into this world, not right now, not when it was so full of terror and uncertainty. She wondered if James thought about all that horror whenever he laid his son down to sleep. She hoped not. She hoped he looked at his son and saw only possibility, the possibility for a world free of a darkness.

Baby Larry gurgled, and Albus Dumbledore stepped into the room.

"Glad to see you're all on time," Albus said, and all the Order members tittered like it was a joke. Lily frowned. No one explained it to her.

"We have a new operative," Albus said. "Another Hogwarts student.  _Gryffindor_ , of course."

More tittering, and Lily's frown deepened.

"I jest, of course. Lily, Lily, don't be shy." Albus held out one arm and Lily stepped up beside him. The room erupted into applause. The sound of it made Lily dizzy, but she forced herself to smile as she squinted out across the room, flushed with rosy light. She recognized more than half the Order members - many were fellow former students, others had faces she'd seen in photographs in the newspaper.

She wondered how many of them recognized her.

She wondered how many of them were thinking,  _There's that girl who used to hang around with Severus Snape_.

"-An excellent witch," Albus was saying. "Very talented, and loyal to our cause -"

Lily watched their faces, looking for flickers of doubt. But the light in the room washed out all expression, leaving just those frozen bright smiles.

_What am I doing here_? she thought.

But she knew. The year and a half since she graduated had been filled with more doubt and loss than she would ever have thought possible as a student - but she had no doubts about this. It was Right. For a year and a half she had moved mechanically through her life, going to work at the robemaker's shop in Everthorne Alley, eating her meals at the pub on Merrythought Street, smoking one cigarette after another while she stared out her flat's grimy circular window and listened to old sad songs on the wireless. For a year and a half the only vividness in her world had been in the memories of her past - the green light in their secret place in the woods, the smoky, papery scent of his Potions textbook. But she was tired of the past. The past was dead.

He was dead.

And the present would be dead, too, if the Death Eaters won, and that was how Lily knew she couldn't sit in her flat and watch the War burn out from her window. That's how she knew she had to fight.

"Let's give her another round of applause," Albus said. "Make her feel welcome."

Applause flooded the room, and the Albus leaned close to her and whispered, "Let's get the introductions over with, shall we?" and took her arm like a gentleman.

Lily had to remind herself to smile, but it wasn't so different from working in the robemaker's shop, where sweetness was a requirement if you didn't want Betty Vane the robemaker to hex a smile permanently into your face.

_I'm fighting_ , she thought.  _I'm fighting_.


	2. Snape

The air around the Dark Lord had a quality to it like the absence of light. Severus had noticed it the first time he'd been brought into his presence, nearly five months after he had joined the Death Eaters and after he had proved himself loyal three times, as was custom. Whenever Severus stood before the Dark Lord something evaporated out of him, something he could not identify and yet would miss, his heart aching, if he tried to fill in the gap.

Severus learned quickly enough to ignore that gap. To do otherwise weakened him, and the Dark Lord despised weakness.

He did not know why he was being brought before the Dark Lord tonight. Lucius Malfoy was accompanying him through the woods - and only Lucius. Severus had not seen any of the other, lesser Death Eaters once, not even lurking around the pub where he met Lucius prior to their trip to the woods. Lucius had bought a bottle of red wine and the two had shared it in silence. Severus had been too nervous to ask questions.

The woods were dark and thick with cold damp mist, the trees spindly and leafless. Severus pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders, and Lucius glanced at him.

"We'll be there soon," he said.

Severus nodded, and Lucius looked forward again, and began to walk slightly faster. Severus matched his pace.

Eventually, they reached a clearing.

The Dark Lord stood there in the center in his thin black robes - no cloak against the cold, and when he spoke, to welcome Lucius and Severus to their gathering, no condensation formed around his words.

"Severus," he said. "How good to see you again."

Severus bowed.

"Come." He gestured with one of his long pale hands. "Don't be shy. Come, come closer."

Severus stepped as close as he would dare, which was close enough that Dark Lord ran the back of his hand down Severus' face. His touch was colder than the air.

"Severus Snape," he said. "How old are you?"

"Almost twenty."

"So you're nineteen." The Dark Lord smiled. He had teeth like a crocodile's.

"Yes, my lord."

"That's quite young."

Severus kept his face blank, but annoyance flashed still flashed unbidden though his thoughts, and then there was a coldness there as well, and the Dark Lord laughed. "I didn't mean it as an  _insult_ , Severus."

"Of course not, my lord."

The coldness withdrew, and Severus found himself shrouding his mind, knitting a shield out of dispassion and emptiness. He knew it was wrong, he knew it was a traitorous act - he  _trusted_ the Dark Lord, and it was no concern of his if the Dark Lord wished to rummage through his mind, stirring up bits of flotsam that might prove dangerous to their cause.

But he still did it.

"In truth," the Dark Lord said, hissing through his teeth. "I find your age impressive. You're one of the youngest amongst my ranks, but you've completed deeds men twice your age have failed at."

At the word  _deeds_ Severus' stomach clinched tight and he saw the blank eyes of a woman whose name he did know and for a split second he groped for the gap inside himself and found only pain. And then the coldness crept in, but to Severus' great relief it saw none of those things.

"You have proven yourself loyal," the Dark Lord went on. "You do as you are asked, and when problems arise you solve them with intelligence and creativity. Don't you think so, Lucius?"

"I do, my lord."

The Dark Lord smiled. "What do you have to say for yourself, Severus?"

Severus hesitated. "I am - I'm honored, my lord, that you would speak so highly of me -"

The Dark Lord swatted the air, his robes rippling. "It's an honor," he said, "To have someone such as you within my ranks."

And when the Dark Lord spoke, Severus knew that his regrets and his doubt were wind, and he knew that he was in the right place after all, because no one had ever said such a thing to him. Not once, not in his entire life.

"Thank you, my lord," he said.

"I wish to elevate you," the Dark Lord said.

Severus didn't move, didn't speak.

"You will be allowed into my inner circle, along with Lucius and Avery and others whom you have not yet met. I have an opening for you, ever since -" The Dark Lord let out a long low hiss, and for a moment the night went darker. "Your work will become more complex - those kidnapping-and-torture missions are for thugs, not someone of your intellect -"

Severus kept the shield in place.

"-You have quite the talent for spell creation, yes?"

Severus wasn't sure if he was meant to answer, so he simply nodded. The Dark Lord didn't seem to notice.

"The Opposition has strengthened their own magical weapons, despite their disdainment of the Dark Arts - with every hex and curse we use against them, they create another five charms to counteract the effects. I've agents working on infiltrating their ranks, of course, but I want  _you_ to match their output. More curses than they could ever charm away." The Dark Lord smiled again. "Could you do that for me, Severus?"

"I would do anything for you, my lord."

"I knew I chose well with you." The Dark Lord's fingers grazed against Severus' face again. With a start, Severus remembered another touch, one from long ago, a touch that was warm instead of cold -

His heart began to ache, and the shields knitted themselves tighter together. An instinctual reaction. Sometimes, that happened.

"You will need to swear your loyalty to me," the Dark Lord said, dropping his hand. "Here, now, beneath the empty sky and before the empty trees. Lucius -"

Light flared in the clearing and Severus crumpled to the ground, clutching his hand to his chest. Blood smeared across his cloak. Pain shot halfway up his arm, radiating from the slash in his palm.

"Thank you, Lucius. Severus, drop your blood into the soil."

Shaking, Severus extended his arm. Blood ran in thick lines against his skin and soaked into the fabric of his robes. It dropped from the tips of his fingers. The black earth turned blacker and began to steam and hiss.

"Swear to me," the Dark Lord said.

Severus watched his blood drip and drip and drip. The steam drifted up like ghosts from the ground. "My lord, I didn't - I'm sorry, but I don't know the words -"

"Your own words, Severus. I won't have my inner circle regurgitating memorized lines to me. Create your own magic, Severus Snape."

Severus glanced at Lucius, whose face was still as stone. Then he closed his eyes, and in the blaze of his pain the words came to him.

"I swear to you," Severus said, and his hand burned with a heat like fire. "Lord Voldemort. I swear my fealty and my loyalty. My strength and my magic and intellect are yours to command." Steam drifted thick and white into the air, and it smelled metallic and sweet, like a dead body. "I am yours to command, your servant, your Death Eater."

The steam was so thick Severus could hardly breath. The blood weighed down the fabric of his sleeve. He realized he couldn't move his fingers.

"I accept your declaration of loyalty," the Dark Lord said, and with his words the steam and the blood and the pain disappeared. But there was still a thin pink line across the palm of Severus' hand. He wiggled his fingers; his joints were stiff.

"Arise," the Dark Lord said, and Severus pushed himself shakily to his feet. He felt drained. Empty. His body swayed back and forth, and he hated himself for showing weakness. But the Dark Lord only gestured for Lucius to step forward.

"Show me your arm, Lucius," he said.

Lucius pushed back the sleeve of his robe. The Mark twisted around his forearm, a swirl of darkness against his pale skin.

Severus' breath caught in his throat.

The Dark Lord tapped his wand against Lucius' mark, and even in the shadows Snape could see darkness welling at the wand's tip like ink.

"Severus," the Dark Lord said.

Severus held out his arm. He still trembled, and he was sweating beneath his robes, and his hair clung to the sides of his face. The Dark Lord noticed none of that. He merely touched his wand to Severus' skin, and there was a dazzling blast of pain, and the world went white and then black and then reformed, mist and shadow and dead trees.

When Snape looked down, the Death Eater's skull grinned up at him, and the snake danced.


	3. Lily

Someone knocked on Lily's door.

She froze at first, the way she always did these days when she heard knocks at her door.  _Would Death Eaters knock_? It was impossible to know. Anyone she could ask, like Marcy Blane or Allen Shunpike or Walter Tremlett, was dead.

The knock repeated, light but insistent. Lily picked up her half-finished cigarette from the ash try and dragged on it, trying to calm her nerves.

"Who's there?" she called out.

"Lily, dear, it's Albus."

Lily didn't move. She had been a member of the Order for a little under a month and already she'd adopted their unspoken wariness as her own.

"Some nights," Albus said through the door, "I wish I was the moon."

The passwords changed from week from week, appearing as blank scraps of parchment overnight, enchanted to recognize the proper recipient's touch and to incinerate upon being read. And this Albus had the correct password.

Lily waved her wand from her spot beside the window and the door swung open. Albus tottered in, ducking a little in the doorway. "What a charming flat," he said. "I like the paintings there. Did you paint them yourself?"

"No, I bought them from a second-hand store in Edinburgh."

"Ah well. That explains why they don't move." Albus pulled a chair out from under the dining table and started to drag it across the room - but then he stopped, sniffing the air. "Is something burning?"

"What? I hope - oh." Lily looked at the cigarette balanced between her fingers. "No, it's just -"

"What is that?" Albus squinted at her cigarette.

"It's a Muggle thing. I'll put it out." And she ground the cigarette into the ashtray.

"Hmm. Smoking paper. Odd." Albus set the chair beside the window and sat down. Then he reached into his robes and pulled out a carton of chocolate frogs. "I thought you might like some sweets." And he set the package on the table beside the ash tray. Lily stared at it.

"Thanks," she said.

Albus made no move to open the package. "I'm afraid this isn't a social visit," he said. "I would have sent a Patronus, but - it's the sort of thing that needs to be discussed in person."

And then he flicked his wand three times, and silvery blue light spread like oil across the room, coating her furniture and her walls with a blue-white shimmer. Lily felt as if her flat had been turned to ice.

"To protect our words," Albus said.

Lily nodded.

Albus took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. "Do you know why Voldemort is so dangerous, Lily?"

Lily cringed at the name, even though James had warned her that Albus did not fear it the way everyone else did.

"Well?" Albus asked. "It wasn't a rhetorical question, I'm afraid."

"I don't know." Lily looked out the window and thought about her parents in their neat little house in the suburbs, and her sister, recently married, and about a life she'd known for eleven years that had never really wanted her. "Because he's insane?"

Albus laughed. "Not exactly. Although I suspect that assessment is accurate." His expression hardened. "No, Lily, he's dangerous because of his accomplishments as a Legilimens."

The word hung on the air, ringing out like crystal.

"Did you know what that is?" Albus asked.

Lily nodded.  _Please don't ask me how please don't ask me how -_

"Good. So you understand what we're dealing with." Albus leaned back in his chair. "I've heard it said that Voldemort is the most powerful Legilimens of ours or any other time. There is a defense against Legilimency -"

"Occlumency," Lily whispered, remembering a bright spring afternoon hidden in the grass, her wand pressed against Sev's temple, trying to find the number he'd hidden for her inside his brain.

"Yes," Albus said. "Occlumency. We don't teach it at Hogwarts, of course, but it is quite useful - more so in these dark times."

Lily frowned. "Are you saying you want to train me -"

Albus' eyes twinkled. "Give me a chance to finish, young lady."

Lily opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it.

"Do you know someone named Myler Hood?" Albus asked.

Lily started to shake her head, but then the name lodged into place. She had seen mention of it in the newspaper; she had heard it whispered amongst the Order. "He's a Death Eater," she said.

"He was a Death Eater," Albus said. "And he was also a member of the Order."

Lily suddenly felt very cold.

"He infiltrated Voldemort's ranks and worked his way up to his inner circle - did you know Voldemort had an inner circle? I suppose you didn't."

"Please stop saying his name," said Lily. She reached for her package of cigarettes, but didn't light one.

"I'm afraid I won't do that, my dear. Voldemort has certain followers he elevates about the others. I don't dare call them friends, but they are -  _trusted_ , given insight into his plans, that sort of thing. Myler was valuable to us in ways I can't even begin to express."

"And now he's dead," said Lily.

"Yes." Albus toyed with the end of his beard. "He was the most accomplished Occlumens I could find, and he held Voldemort off as long as he could -" Albus sighed and gazed out the window. Lily followed him: it had begun to sleet and the drops pinged against the glass. "He died a traitor and a hero."

"That's usually how it goes," said Lily. "Isn't it?"

Albus peered at her. "Only when you look at both sides of the story."

Lily didn't say anything. Albus shifted in his chair.

"The Order needs a replacement, of course. I said that Myler was the most skilled Occlumens I could find, but he is not the most skilled Occlumens I  _know_. Unfortunately, that young man has already chosen sides."

Lily yanked out a cigarette and lit it with the tip of her wand.

"I would remind you, Lily," Albus said. "That you promised - that you  _swore_ \- to obey me, for as long as it takes to win the war."

"I know." Smoke floated up toward the ceiling.

"I would not ask you to do this if it weren't of upmost importance -"

"You haven't asked me to do anything."

"I know you were close to Severus while the two of you were at Hogwarts. You chose diverging paths, but diverging paths will sometimes loop back around, and if you were to see Severus again -"

"Severus Snape is dead," said Lily.

Albus stared at her for a long time.

"No," he said. "He's not."

Tears prickled at the edges of Lily's eyes, and she sucked the cigarette smoke down into her lungs, but of course it wasn't magic and so it did nothing at all.

"It's a simple request," Albus said. "He often visits the Dog and Duck pub in the evenings. Alone. You'll arrange to come blustering in - this will require you to bring back that sparkling young woman we all loved so dearly at Hogwarts, but I've no doubt you'll manage - and have a drink with him. Tell him you've joined the Order."

"What if tries to read my thoughts?" Lily said.

Albus smiled. "Then you'll let him. All he'll see is that Albus Dumbledore told you to meet with him, and told you to tell him you were part of the Order. Because that's all I'm telling you."

Lily smoked her cigarette down to the filter and dropped in the ashtray. "Won't that make him suspicious?"

"It'll pique his interest."

"You want him to be a spy."

"Yes. And hopefully that'll pique his interest as well."

The flat fell silence except for the sleet outside.

"I won't do it," said Lily. "It's too dangerous."

Albus tilted his head. "You're scared of him? Your friend for seven years?"

"Nine years," said Lily. "And yes."

"Such a sadness."

_Don't talk to me about sadness_. "Find someone else."

"There is no one else." Albus leaned forward. He pressed his hand on the table between them. "This plan can  _only_ work with you, Lily. You're the key."

"And Sev's the lock?"

"Without an informant the war is as good as lost."

That stopped Lily dead. She looked Albus straight on. His eyes were as cold and blue as the enchantment coating the walls of her flat, as cold and blue as the ice forming on the dead plants outside.

"That's not what you tell the Order," she said. "That's not what you tell James and Remus and Alice and all the rest of them -"

"Because it's not what the Order needs to hear," he said. "But it is the truth."

"So the Order doesn't need to hear the truth?"

"Not always, no." He paused. "You swore an oath, Lily."

_The war is as good as lost_. Lily thought about James and Joanie's son. What would happen to children growing up in a world ruled by such darkness? The thought made her want to curl inside of herself. It made her want to disappear into smoke and ash and fire.

"I know it's not the danger that frightens you."

Lily turned away from him, toward the window and the sleet and grey grey world. She could see parts of her reflection in the glass - her left eye, her bottom lip, the coppery shine of her hair. "All I have to do is buy him a drink and tell him I joined the Order?"

She did not want to disappear. Not really. Not yet.

"That's all you have to do," said Albus. "I'll take care of the rest."


	4. Lily

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter (and this one only) contains some gendered slurs.

Lily went to the Dog and Duck three days later. She Apparated into Cokeworth alone, wearing a French-style green silk robe, cut slim through the waist and hips and draped off the shoulders. A single strand of her mother's pearls lay at the base of her throat. Her hair was twisted up into a knot. She darkened her eyes with kohl and mascara, and when she had looked at her reflection in the flat's cracked bathroom mirror, she almost saw herself.

_That sparkling young woman I'd been back at Hogwarts_. Lily was still unconvinced that she hadn't died with Sev.

The streets of Cokeworth were nearly deserted, although if it was because of He Who Must Not Be Named or because of the constant pattering of frozen rain Lily couldn't say. She wished it would snow. Winter always made her melancholy, but at least snow covered up the death of the world. It was easier to pretend things were all right when everything looked beautiful.

Lily pushed into the Dog and Duck and slid out of her coat. An old man read a newspaper in the corner and a woman stood behind the bar, cleaning wine glasses with her wand. The woman looked up when Lily came in but didn't say anything. The old man ignored her.

"Could I have some butterbeer, please?" Lily asked the woman, who nodded and flicked her wand. Lily sat down at a table near the fireplace, facing the door: the woman sent a mug of butterbeer sailing across the room. It landed in front of Lily without spilling a drop.

Lily took a sip and though it warmed her insides the beer tasted too sweet, too thick. She choked it down, then pulled a book out of her bag and opened to a random page and read the first sentence there over and over.

About five minutes later, cold wet air billowed into the pub, and Lily jerked her head up from the book and there he was, standing in the doorway, his face long and pale, his black hair bleeding into the black of his coat. He stared at her, unmoving. For a moment he was as intangible as a ghost.

And a ghost couldn't hurt you.

"Close the damn door!" shouted the woman from behind the bar. "You're getting water everywhere."

Sev glared at her but didn't say anything. He stepped out of the doorway and the wind slammed the door shut behind him. Ice sparkled on his coat and his hair and glistened on the floor. The blast of cold still hadn't evaporated out of the room.

"Glass of elf wine," Sev told the woman. Lily clutched her book so tightly her fingers turned white but she didn't take her eyes off Sev and he didn't take his eyes off her.

The glass of elf-wine drifted across the inn and hovered next to Sev's head.

"Hello," Lily said.

"Lily." Sev plucked the glass out of the air and took a long drink. "Why are you here?"

"I needed to get out of the rain."

Sev seemed to hesitate, and for a moment Lily was aware of her heart pounding inside her chest, and she wondered what he was going to do to her. But he only strode across the room and sat down at her table.

"I meant in Cokeworth," he said. "I'd heard you were living in Dorny -"

"I joined the Order of the Phoenix," Lily blurted.

Sev blinked and stared at her. Then he smiled. "That's not altogether unsurprising."

_There_ , thought Lily _, Mission accomplished_. So why didn't she want to leave?

They sat in silence for a few moments. Sev swirled the wine around in its glass and Lily ran her thumb across the cover of her book.

"I like your robe," Sev said. When Lily looked up at him he was peering at her through the dark clumps of his hair, and he was smiling, shy, the way he had sometimes as a boy. "The green goes nicely with your hair."

Lily felt as if she were in school again, as if they were in Hogsmeade and not Cokeworth, as if the only favor she had to ask of him was to borrow his Potion notes again. She leaned across the table and pushed his hair, greasy as ever, away from his forehead. "You should take better care of yourself," she told him.

"I've better things to worry about."

Lily smiled even though she didn't feel happy at all, only sad. How many times had they had that exchange in school? Fifty? A hundred? It'd become a way to say hello. And now she'd slipped back into the pattern as easily as she had her green silk robe, and all because he was  _here_ and he was  _alive_ and not dead the way she'd convinced herself because it was the only way of coming to terms with who he'd become -

Lily pulled her hand away. Sev's smile flickered. He sipped his wine, looked down at the floor.

_I miss you_ , Lily thought.

And then the door to the pub swung open.

Sev didn't seem to notice or care - another thing that hadn't changed - but Lily did glance up, and what she saw turned her whole body to ice. She didn't recognize their faces but she recognized their dark robes and their pale, snake-eyed masks. And she recognized the intent of their drawn wands.

Sev looked at her. "Lily? What's the mat-"

"Why did you do this?" she whispered.  _Why was I so fucking stupid?_

"Do what?" Sev twisted around in his seat, and when he saw the Death Eaters he stood up. Like he expected them.  _Because he had expected them_.

"Hello, Crispin, I didn't know you came here."

"Got word that the Opposition was loitering around." Crispin craned his neck to look around Sev. "There's the mudblood bitch," he said, his words hardly muffled by the mask. Lily didn't move. She had no idea what to do. No one in the Order had ever trained her for this moment. They had spoken about glory and honor and bravery but no one had ever told her what she should  _fucking do_. "Matches the picture and everything."

_Picture_?

Crispin moved closer to Sev and Lily and the other Death Eaters fanned out across the room. The woman behind the bar had disappeared. The old man was folding up his newspaper, slow and careful, as if he were in the presence of some wild animal.

Lily could hardly breathe. She could hardly think. The closer Crispin came to her the more she panicked. Sweat dripped down her spine. Her hands shook.

When Crispin was close enough to Sev to touch him, Lily screamed and pushed away from the table, knocking her chair to the floor.

The old man bounded toward the door.

"Avada Kadavra!" shouted Crispin. Hot green light flooded the room and the old man lay crumpled on the floor and Crispin was laughing and she was in Sev's arms except it was all wrong because he had her hands pinned behind her back and his wand shoved up under chin.

"I was talking to her," Sev told the Death Eaters. "I almost had the information I needed."

"You can't get information from  _talking_ ," one of the others said, in a voice like tearing metal.

"Actually, for you talking is  _required_ for getting information," snapped Snape. "Not for me, though. It's true." He dragged Lily away from the fireplace, past the old man still lying dead on the floor. Lily struggled against him but his grip was strong and she could feel his wand digging into her skin, and she knew she was going to die, that he was going to kill her.

"Look," said Crispin, "The Dark Lord didn't say nothing about  _information_. He said we need to come here and dispatch with the little cunt. One less mudblood in the world, right?"

He lifted up his wand and pointed it at Lily's heart and she screamed and thrashed up against Sev's body, tears streaming down her face, her thoughts wild and incoherent, but Sev just yanked her out of the wandline and said, "Crispin, I wouldn't expect you to understand this - we can't all be intellectually capable, of course - but  _any_ member of the Opposition has information we can use."

Crispin made a low growling noise in the back of his throat, though some of the other Death Eaters laughed. Sev dragged Lily through the Death Eaters and shoved her up against the bar. For a split second his mouth was against her ear, his breath warm and soft, and in a whisper like the wind he said, "Scream when you should scream."

Lily whimpered.  _He wants to hear me scream. I loved him and he wants to hear me scre-_

" _Legilimens_!" Sev said. The coldness of knife steel shot out of his wand. Lily was not going to scream, but she flailed against the bar and moaned, waiting for the coldness to pierce into her mind, waiting for him to see what she saw, all those memories of his betrayal -

But it never came.

The spell skirted along the outside of her thoughts, gentle as cotton, seeing nothing. Lily sucked in breath after breath and looked at Sev, whose face was stone.

"What're you getting over there?" Crispin asked.

"Are you the Dark Lord?" Sev said. "No? Then shut the fuck up."

More laughter.

Sev drew his wand back and the tickle of his Legilimens spell disappeared. Tears blurred Lily's vision, turned the inn and the Death Eaters and Sev into streaks of light.

" _Atra dolor_ ," Sev said.

Something warm hit her in the chest. The warmth spread through her veins. It was a curse, she could tell from the incantation, but it didn't hurt at all. What sort of curse doesn't hurt? Lily lifted her head and looked at Sev and his face was still stone except for his eyes, which glinted with - not anger, she realized, nor rage, nor hatred - but with desperation.

_Scream when you should scream_.

"Tough bitch," one of the Death Eaters said.

And then Lily understood.

She screamed.

The Death Eaters cheered and laughed - all of them except Sev, who kept sending the warmth running soft and swift through her body. Lily screamed until she ran out of air and then she screamed again. Sev lifted her up with a silent levitation charm and dropped her on the other side of the bar, and when she hit the floor  _that_ hurt but she stopped screaming and stared up at the crossbeams in the ceiling and lay as still as she could. As still as death.

"She dead?"

"Of course she's dead. You think I can't cast my own spells?"

"I dunno, I thought you might want to look at her - I like to look at 'em - Admire my work - "

"That's because you're a cretin.  _Morsmordre_." There was a crackle in the air, like electricity. "Come on, all of you. We need to go."

Footsteps. Not just Sev's. The door opening -

" _Expelliarmus!_ "

The pub erupted into shouts and screams. The eerie light of enchantment splattered across the ceiling and the walls, and something, some curse, hit the shelf behind the bar, shattering all the bottles of liquor. Lily curled into a ball and covered her neck with her hands, but she was still soaked through with alcohol, and bits of broken glass stung her skin.

She knew she should fight - she could hear them out there, James and Sirius, of course, and Alice and Fabian and a handful of other voices she didn't recognize, all of them screaming charms and Dim spells - but she didn't move. Partially it was because she was bleeding from the glass cuts and partially it was because she was afraid and partially it was because she was supposed to be dead and if any of the Death Eaters saw her they would know that Sev had lied.

Although it sounded as if the Order was winning anyway: she could hear the low moaning  _thump_ as the Death Eaters Apparated away. She pushed her back up against the bar and closed her eyes. The sound of fighting swirled around her. Someone must have stayed behind. But the voice hurling curses was rough and raspy, not Sev's at all -

" _Atra dolor_!"

It struck the mirror behind the bar, but it didn't shatter the glass - only rebounded, and struck Lily in the arm.

This time, it hurt.

It hurt so badly that her world went white with pain.

And when she screamed, her scream was real.


	5. Lily

Lily woke up in a room full of weak sunlight. Her mouth was dry and her tongue thick, and her arm ached, dull and throbbing. She pushed herself up to sitting with her good arm, then slid off the bed. The room was sparse and clean, the walls painted pale blue, the floors polished wood. Thin blue curtains hung over the windows, and when Lily pushed them aside, she saw an empty garden, the plants dead and shriveled for winter.

"Ah, get back in bed, young lady!" A plump silver-haired witch bustled into the room. "I don't like that arm of yours and I'm not sure you need to be out and about yet."

"Where am I?" Lily sat down on the edge of the bed. The floor was cold beneath her bare feet.

"Donagham Manor in Codmoor County," the woman said. "Order healing house. I'm Filemina Wintringham, head healer. Get back under the covers dear, you're shivering!" Filemina pointed her wand at the fireplace and a red-yellow flames  _whooshed_ into existence. "That good-for-nothing Owen let the fire out again. Like he forgets we have patients, I swear -"

Lily crawled back under the bed's thick, worn quilt. Her arm was bandaged and strapped across her chest by a sling, and still it throbbed, throbbed, throbbed.

"Now, how are you feeling?" Filemina asked. "Are you hungry? I'm sure you're thirsty, dear, let me get a glass of water - there you go." She brought a glass and pitcher sailing across the room and set the pitcher to pouring.

"My arm hurts," Lily says. "And I feel - indistinct."

Filemina handed Lily the water glass and Lily gulped it down. "Well I imagine you would," Filemina said. "You've been asleep for two days."

"What!"

Filemina patted Lily on the knee. "That was a nasty curse what hit you. James remembered the incantation but it wasn't nothing I'd heard of before, and all the usual fixes didn't do much good save to bring down your fever. Potions, spells, charms -" Filemina smiled. "If you weren't sitting here before me I'd say it was a killing curse. It's what it looks like, but -" she shrugged.

"It wasn't," Lily said. "It wasn't the Ava-" But the words stuck in her mouth, and for a moment the little blue room was filled with cruel green light.

"No, of course not, dear. I meant - well, I mean another killing curse. A different sort." And although Filemina's voice stayed cheery, her mouth straightened into a dark, hard line. Just for a second and it was gone. Lily's head spun.

"Another?" The thought was colder than the air in the room.

"Well, it obviously wasn't," Filemina said. "You pulled through fine."

_Not exactly_ , Lily thought, pain burning deep into her shoulder. Although she did wonder why it hadn't hurt her when Sev cast it. He had cast it, right? He'd said the words, but when the curse struck her there had only been a warmth like the summer sun -

Lily's thoughts clouded and suddenly she was back in the Dog and Duck, and the old man was lying dead on the floor, and she was screaming.

"Avada Kadavra!" shouted Crispin the Death Eater. Light, pain, emptiness. Screaming.

The old man's eyes like two pale coins.

Screaming. Screaming. Screaming.

And then, from far away, scratchy and distant, a woman's kind voice, whispering the Sleeping spell, and then more darkness.

Then came the dreams.

* * * 

The next time Lily awoke, the light in the room was grey and soft, and the curtains cast dim shadows that danced across the opposite walls. A figure was sleeping in a chair by the door - Lily could hear him snoring. When she cast Lumos a pale house elf jerked awake and jumped to his feet.

"Ms. Evans!" he stuttered. "Owen'll run and tell 'em you're awake - don't move - Mrs. Wintringham said you shouldn't move or get out of bed, you don't want the waking dreams to come back on again - wait here -"

And then he bounded out of the room, his footsteps echoing off into silence.

Lily set the lit wind on her bedside table and groped around for the water pitcher and glass. The pitcher was empty, and Aguamenti didn't work - but some half-fragment of a memory told her to  _pour,_ and she did, and water splashed into the glass, bright blue in the light of the wand.

She drank it down, refilled her glass, drank that down as well. Her thoughts didn't feel as strange as they had the last time she awoke, although the ache in her arm seemed even worse. And she'd had dreams, the most terrible dreams, dreams of death and darkness and Sev and wandlight and screaming -

Footsteps pattered out in the hallway, and then Filemina appeared with the elf in tow.

"Lily!" she cried. "Oh, you woke up sooner than I expected - I do hope that's a good sign. Hold still, child, I need to check some things -"

And she waved her wand slowly up and down the length of Lily's body, finally resting the point of her wand on Lily's temple.

"Do you remember your dreams?" Filemina asked.

"Um, sort of. Mostly that they were - that I was  _terrified_ \- I don't -"

Filemina shushed her. "No use talking about them. Albus told me you'd never seen battle before, I should have taken precautions -"

"It wasn't because of the curse?"

Filemina shook her head, then waved her wand in front of herself. Letters scrolled out in the darkness. "No, dear, the waking dreams have happened to most all of us who fight - there's a potion to keep them in the nighttime."

"I don't want them, then, either," Lily said, remembering her dreams' flood of sick dread, the revulsion, the dead man's eyes.

"You'll have to take that up with Albus, I'm afraid." Filemina winked out the scroll of letters. "The good news is that it looks like we have them quarantined - your arm, though." She tsked. "Owen! Oh, where is that creature - there you are! Light the lamps! It's too dark to think in here."

Owen flung magic out from his fingertips, and the room suffused itself in a soft golden glow. Lily still hadn't gotten used to house-elves.

"Much better."

"Was anyone else hurt?" Lily asked.

"Hmmn?" Filemina sat down on the side of the bed and gently slid Lily's arm out of the sling. Pain shot through Lily's side. When she gasped Filemina stroked her hair. "This will only take a second, dear. You mean at the skirmish at the Dog and Duck? No, no, nothing major. Sirius got hit with a stinging hex, nothing I couldn't patch up in an hour. You got the brunt of it."

Lily laughed. Filemina looked up at her in alarm. "You find that funny, dear?" Lily could tell her from her tone that Filimina most certainly did not.

"I didn't even fight," Lily said. "I hid behind the bar. The curse rebounded off a mirror -"

"Oh, hush! Your role was the most dangerous - sending you in as a test like that -"

"A test?"

Filimina suddenly seemed very interested in removing the bandages from Lily's arm.

"A test? For who? For  _me_? Some kind of initiation -"

"Don't be silly, sweetling! We don't work that way." Filemina dropped the bandages on the table and peered closely at Lily's arm. "Cobwebs and fiddlesticks! No change."

Lily tried to twist her shoulder to get a look at her arm, but the pain was too sharp, and she cried out and slumped against the cold metal bedframe.

"Don't strain yourself - it's nothing you need to be looking at anyw -"

"No!" said Lily. "I want to see. If I was brave enough to be a  _test_ I'm brave enough to see what's happened to my arm."

Filemina pulled back, her round face hard and stern. Lily matched her gaze. She could feel the fire burning behind her eyes.  _Don't fuck with me_ , she thought.

" _Accio_  mirror," said Filemina.

The mirror that answered her call was small and slim and backed in carved ornate silver - it came winging through the doorway like a bat. Filemina caught it and handed it to Lily, who no longer felt as strong as she had a few seconds previous.

Lily looked into the reflection.

"Oh," she said.

The top half of her arm was bruised, a swirl of purple and black and dark yellow. In the place where the curse had struck her there was a starburst of bright angry red, and thin red lines trailed up to her shoulder and down to the crook of her elbow.

"Jesus," Lily said.

Filemina snatched the mirror away. "Told you it was nothing you need to see."

"My arm looks like it's about to fall off."

"Oh, I'm sure it won't come to that." But Lily still heard the hesitation in her voice. "Albus sent for Horatio Alesi - you've met him, I believe? He's a great skill in Potions, and we're hoping he'll be able to whip something up for you -"

Lily didn't say anything.

"Are you hungry, dear?" asked Filemina. "I can have Owen bring you something? Some broth and bread, maybe?"

"Yes, fine." Lily wasn't hungry at all. She tried to move her arm and the pain seared into her chest and down into the curve of her waist, and she cried out. Filemina sighed.

"We'll get you patched up," she said. "No need to worry."

_Liar._  And Lily, despite the pain and the shock of seeing her arm, had not forgotten what Filemina had said about her being a test. Albus. She would have to ask Albus - not that she was so convinced he would tell the truth either.

Filemina rebound Lily's arm, chattering and gossiping as she did so, but Lily didn't hear a word she said, and she forced herself to think of nothing.

* * *

Lily stayed in the healing house for three days. Her arm did not improve.

Albus came to see her the afternoon that she was preparing to travel back to her flat in Dorny. She'd been asking for him ever since she woke up and saw her arm for the first time, but Filemina had always waved her off, saying he was busy, that she was weak.

And then he came sliding out of the fireplace, clutching a bouquet of hothouse flowers.

"Lily!" he cried when he saw her. "My brave girl. I heard about your arm." He turned to Filemina. "Should she be going home so soon?"

"I want to," said Lily. She took the flowers and held them under nose out of habit, but they didn't smell like anything.

"Did Horatio ever come by?" Albus asked. "With the Potions?"

"They didn't work."

"Ah." Dumbledore gave Filemina a kindly smile. "Could you excuse us for a moment? I need to speak with Lily alone."

Lily narrowed her eyes. Filemina nodded and bustled out of the room, dragging Owen along with her.

Albus sat down on the bed and patted the mattress. "Come, sit," he said.

"I'd rather stand," Lily said. Then, as an afterthought - "I've been in that bed three days."

"Oh, of course, of course, silly me." He waved his wand and the walls turned silvery blue.

Dread pooled in Lily's stomach.

"I thought we were in a safe house," she said.

"We are," said Dumbledore. "But secrets still must be kept. You did very well, Lily. I'm quite sorry about your arm."

"Why was I a test?"

Dumbledore didn't move, didn't react at all.

"A test," Lily went on. "Filemina said I was a test - " She stopped and tossed the flowers on the bedside table. "It was for Sev, wasn't it? I thought she meant for me at first, but I had a lot of time to think, you know, lying in bed, trying not to fall asleep -"

"Are you referring to your nightmares?" said Dumbledore. "Filemina said you'd been asking after dream suppressant. My dear, you shouldn't take that. Those dreams will help you."

Lily stared at him.

"You must be brave, Lily."

Lily didn't want to talk about the dreams. If the Order wouldn't give her dream suppressant, she'd make her own. But Albus didn't need to know that.

"I spent a lot of time thinking," Lily went on. "And remembering what happened, even though - " She stopped, took a deep breath. "And the Death Eater said they'd gotten a _picture_. And they knew what I looked like - they recognized me. Sev wouldn't have given that to them; he didn't know I was going to be there. No one did." She took a deep breath.  _Be brave, Lily Evans._ "Except for you."

Albus regarded her with his pale blue eyes.

"Why did you do that to me?"

The air in the room was still and heavy. Lily's arm throbbed. She could hear her heart beating.

"Well?" she asked.

Albus did not smile when he spoke.

"I wanted to see if Severus would protect you," he said. "In front of his fellow Death Eaters, and in a such a way that he would be obligated to lie to Voldemort. I was almost certain that he would, but - there was no other way to, ah, to  _test_ it -"

Lily trembled. Part of her still wanted to see Albus the way the others in the Order did - kind and good, incapable of deception. A beacon of light amongst the darkness. But she realized in that moment Albus was not a symbol after all, but a man, a general of an army. And he had a war to win.

"What if he hadn't protected me?" Lily said, careful to keep her voice calm and measured.

"Then you would be dead."

Lily took a step back, shaking - she stumbled over a gap in the floor and nearly fell, catching herself on the table at the last moment. She knocked the flowers to the floor.

"Oh," she said.

"I'm sorry that's not the answer you wanted to hear."

"You would have sacrificed me -"

"I sent in ten of our best fighters to bring you out of the pub after Severus proved what he was capable of. Ten. For one girl. Every single one of them would have sacrificed themselves."

"That's not the same!" Lily screamed. Albus jumped. "They  _knew_ what they were doing. You didn't tell me - you just -"

"I couldn't risk him looking into your thoughts."

Lily blinked back tears. Her face was hot with anger.

"You know how important this is, Lily."

"And what happens when those Death Eaters find out I'm not really dead?" she asked. "Then they'll kill Sev and none of this will matt -"

"I took precautions against that," Albus said, holding up one hand. "Severus is safe as long as he keeps your life a secret. Which he will."

"Until Voldemort digs deep enough into his memory and finds me!"

"In which case," Dumbledore said. "He would not have worked as a double agent."

"So you'd just let him  _die_?"

"He's a Death Eater, Lily."

Lily screamed. She picked the flowers up off the ground and hurled them at Albus, who didn't even flinch when they hit him in the chest and exploded across the bed, a shower of color.

"Lily," Albus said. "Calm down."

"Fuck you!"

"Please don't speak to me like that." Albus stood up, his robes rustling. The flowers scattered across the floor. He took hold of Lily's good hand, and she was too exhausted and in too much pain to try and jerk away. "Lily, look at me.  _Look at me_."

She looked.

"We will keep you safe. You are too important right now not to. If Severus is capable of deceiving Voldemort so deeply - I told you, you're the key. If we lose you, we lose Severus."

"So that's it?" said Lily. "That's all you want me for? To - what? Seduce Sev over to your side?"

Albus didn't answer.

"It is, isn't it? Like Mata Hari?" Lily laughed. "You won't even teach me to fight, but you'll send me off to - to -  _fuck_  for the cause. Charming."

Albus' expression softened. "We can teach you to fight."

"Really?" Lily looked at him. "Really teach me? Not just talk for half an hour about  _bravery?"_

"Why Lily," said Albus. "That was almost condescending."

"Don't make jokes."

Albus' eyes twinkled. "Another request I'm afraid I can't fill. Unlike your request for battle training - you're right. DADA classes didn't quite prepare you as thoroughly as I might have hoped. I'll have Sirius and James-"

"Isn't there anyone else?"

"No. Sirius and James will work with you in learning some of the lesser Dim spells before you begin your work with Severus."

Lily frowned. She had never agreed to bring Severus over to the Order. And yet she wasn't going to protest.  _The War's as good as lost without him_. Although Lily wasn't sure if her silent agreement was because of her belief in the cause or because of Albus and his web of words.

Maybe she could do it. Maybe she could pretend they had never left Hogwarts, that things were as they had been before he joined the Death Eaters. She had never acted on her feelings then. Sometimes, she still regretted it.

"You should also have Occlumency training. I'll speak to Portia."

Lily didn't say anything to that.

Albus smiled at her, his face full of warmth. "I'm glad you see why this is important, Lily."

_Do I?_

"You should rest at home," he went on. "I'm contacting a colleague of mine in Morocco - I'm hoping he'll agree to look at your arm. Filemina tells me it doesn't seem to be spreading, which is a good sign."

Her arm. For a few minutes Lily had almost forgotten about it, but now the pain flared up again, sharper than before.

"Thank you," Lily said, feeling sullen.

"No, my dear," said Albus. "Thank you."

And then he withdrew the silencing spell and walked out of the room.


	6. Snape

Severus read the newspaper article so many times that he'd memorized it.  _Death Eater Attack in Cokeworth, Two Dead_. One the old man. The other a young London woman named Bella Goodfellow.

No picture, of course, but Severus knew the young woman was meant to be Lily. What he didn't know was which side could claim responsibility for this obfuscation of the truth - the Dark Lord had not mentioned it, and besides, there would be no reason for it, strategical or otherwise. Severus could only assume it was the Opposition's doing (the name  _Bella Goodfellow_ screamed Opposition anyway), although he did not know know why.

He also knew that Lily wasn't dead.

He'd seen Uric cast the Dolor curse that night at the pub, in those moments before he'd Apparated off to safety - he'd seen the curse bounce off the mirror, heard the start of her screaming, felt all the air rush out of his body. He'd stretched out to kill Uric himself, white-hot with rage, but Sirius Black beat him to it and then the dark ink had swallowed him whole and deposited him, screaming and weeping, in the overgrown yard of his house in Spinner's End, across the river from the pub. He could see the sickly outline of the skull and snake crouching in the sky - the Mark he'd cast, as a  _cover_ , to make them think Lily was truly dead. And now she was. Not by his hand, but by the curse he created, and because of an accident, a  _rebound_ -

Severus had somehow managed to stumble into his dark cramped house, where everything was lit green by the Dark Mark. The sight of it made Severus scream, and he pulled books off the shelves and threw plates at all the walls and then, in a need for revenge that could only be brought on by grief, he cast a tracking spell.

The tracking spell he used was Dark, created by his Lord for seeking out enemies. Severus tracked Sirius. He despised Sirius for a thousand reasons, and now he had one more: Sirius had killed Uric, he had taken away the one thing Severus could do for Lily in her death.

He found Sirius easily - he hadn't even left the Dog and Duck yet, and all his Opposition pals were with him, clustering around a single life -

Lily Evans.

Severus had stared at the spell's ghostly imprint for a long time, disbelieving. You could not track the dead. And yet he had just tracked Lily.

His rage died away. And when the Opposition blinked out of his spell's cast, he fell across his bed on his back, one hand thrown across his forehead, his heart still pounding. _She hadn't died_.

For all Severus knew about magic, for all the work he'd done in the Dark Arts, there were still things he didn't understand. The thought made him feel small.

He spent the rest of the night pouring over his notes, puzzling out the mystery of her survival. Every hour or so he tracked her. She always showed in different, far-flung places: Texas one time, the North Pole another. It meant the Opposition had her hidden in one of their safe houses, for which Severus was grateful. The moment he did not see her in the spell was the moment she was dead.

For nearly a week his thoughts were bound up entirely with Lily - with Lily and the Dolor curse. Whenever his Mark burned and hissed he built careful constructions inside his mind before Apparating to the Dark Lord's side, so that his Lord would not see her face, her green eyes, and know that Severus had spared her, a woman of the Opposition and a Muggle-born at that. And Severus had more dangerous secrets about Lily Evans as well, tucked away deep inside himself.

The constructions always held.

When the Dark Lord had no need of his talents Severus sat hunched in his study, reading through his books and his parchments, listening to the wind howling low and mournful outside.

And then one bleak, grey-white afternoon, he tracked Lily, and found her.

She was in Dorny, at a residential address Severus knew was the flat she'd been living in since leaving Hogwarts - he used to track her when he first learned how, after that terrible day on the street in front of her parent's house when she told him told him goodbye in a voice as flat and empty as the cloudless summer sky. He'd stopped after a couple of months, telling himself it was hopeless, though he would still wonder from time to time, and think back on her. Always when he was alone.

Severus watched the tracking spell for the rest of the day, leaving it cast above his desk. She didn't leave her flat.

_It would be so easy_ , he thought.  _And if she's been harmed by the curse -_

He had no idea what the curse might have done to her. He had theories, hypotheses, but of course there was no way of knowing for certain.

He also had hypotheses for how he might fix her, if she was in need of fixing.

But what would she do when he showed up at her door? Scream for Dumbledore and Potter and the rest of them to come drag him off to Azkaban? Let them - the Dark Lord had taken Azkaban two months earlier.

Or maybe she'd Avada Kedavra him on the spot.

Or maybe she'd tell him goodbye again in that empty voice, her eyes wet and glassy like the ocean.

Severus deliberated for the rest of the day and into the night, laying awake beneath the layers of old crocheted afghans, listening to the crackle of the fire and the constant fucking wind. He slipped the newspaper article out from under his pillow and read it in the darkness. He thumbed idly through one of his books, his thoughts on Lily, on the way she had looked at the Dog and the Duck before Crispin came in with his cronies. Severus really had liked her green robe, the way her hair had shone against the fabric in the firelight, like a painting.

The next morning, Severus decided he would see her.


	7. Snape

Severus knocked on Lily's door. The flat was on the second floor of an old brick building, and the hallway was drafty and cold. Severus tucked his hands into his coat and stomped his feet, trying to warm up.

"Who's there?" Her voice came drifting out from behind the door. Severus hesitated and for a moment almost lost his nerve entirely.

"Hello?" Her voice sounded closer, as if she were right on the other side of the door. Severus could hear music playing, something faint and sad.

He put his hand on his wand. Just in case.

"Lily," he said. "It's me. I mean - it's Severus."

No answer except the music. Severus closed his eyes. His heart pounded like he was scared. He pressed his head against the door as he spoke. "Lily," he said. "Are you - hurt? I saw what happened at the pub - it wasn't me, I swear it, but if you're still hurt, I think I can heal you."

The music stopped.

"How did you know about my arm?" Her voice was  _right there_ , he could tell, and if there hadn't been a door between them he would have been close enough to kiss her.

"I didn't," Severus said. "Until now. What's wrong with it?" A sudden, horrific thought dawned on him. "It hasn't fallen off, has it?"

"No." One heartbeat, another. "Will it?"

"I don't know. Let me in so I can see."

A long pause.

"Let you in? You think I'm that stupid?"

_For fuck's sake_. "Then come out into the hallway. I swear to you that I'm alone."  _I only saved your fucking life a week ago, you think you could give me the benefit of the dou-_

The door swung open.

She had her wand out, but what caught Severus' attention was her arm, strapped across her chest, the bandages thick beneath the sleeve of her jumper. And she looked pale and drawn, her hair mussed as if she hadn't been sleeping.

Lily stuck her head into the hallway and looked down one end and then the other. Her wand trembled.

"I told you. Just me," Severus said.

"Why are you here?" Lily stepped back into her doorway.

Severus pointed at her arm.

"You said you didn't know about that."

"I thought you might be hurt. That curse - " He didn't look at her as he spoke, but down at the mud-encrusted hallway carpet. "It should have killed you."

"Then why didn't I die when you cast it?" Severus forced himself to look up. She wasn't pointing her wand at him, he realized. She had it out but she wasn't pointing it at him.

"Let me explain inside," he said.

She stared at him, her eyes fierce and bright despite the dark circles hollowing out her face. "Are you going to kill me?"

"No. Let me in."

Lily pressed her mouth into a tight thin line, but she stepped aside.

Her flat was small and tidy and cold. It smelled like cigarette smoke and lavender soap. Like her.

Lily closed the door behind him and stood beside it, her good arm dangling her wand at her side. Severus walked up to a scratched, rickety table and set down his briefcase, filled with with potion ingredients and a few notes scribbled on scraps of parchment.

"Let me see your arm," he said.

"Tell me why the curse didn't kill me."

Severus looked up at her. Her face was twisted with emotion - anger, maybe, fear, confusion. He thought about how she looked whenever she smiled.

He cast a protection ward, a small one, just enough to muffle their conversation. Lily didn't protest.

"I diluted it," he said.

"You what? Is that even possible?"

Severus hesitated.  _It is when you're the spell's creator_. "Sometimes."

Lily held his gaze for a second or two. "Why did you -"

"Why do you think? They would've killed you.  _Bella Goodfellow_." He hadn't meant to bring up the name, but sometimes his frustration came tumbling out like that anyway.

Lily looked away. "I didn't know anything about that when I went in - "

"Well, I'm not looking for an explanation. Fair enough? We both escaped with our lives."

Lily didn't say anything.

"What's wrong with your arm?"

Lily pushed her hair away from her face. For a moment he was afraid she would ask after more details about the Dolor curse, but she just shook her head and sighed. "It won't heal," she said. "It's bruised and - really quite gross-looking, honestly. And it hurts. I've been taking some Soothing potion and I've used about fifty healing spells on it. I even got some morphine off Petunia. No clue how she got it but - doesn't matter. It didn't help. Nothing did."

Severus frowned. "Take off your jumper."

Lily looked at him.

"I didn't mean - " Severus felt himself blushing, which infuriated him. "Look, I can't see it through the jumper, okay? Take off the bandages too."

And for a moment Lily's eyes sparkled, and he thought maybe she was going to laugh. She didn't. Instead, she unhooked the sling and pulled the jumper off her arm - slowly, carefully, occasionally hissing through her teeth. Severus thought he should offer help but doubted she would want him to touch her. At least she used her wand to unwind the bandages.

The sight of Lily's arm made Severus sick to his stomach.

"Is that where it hit you?" he asked, pointing at the red mark cracking across her skin. Forcing himself to look at it.

Lily nodded. "It bounced off the mirror. Fil - the healer who looked at it thought maybe that's why it didn't kill me."

Severus stared at the wound for a few moments, thinking. A rebound would have killed her; he'd designed the curse with that particular quality in mind. Of course, he couldn't tell Lily  _that_. He shook his head. "No," he said. "I think it didn't kill you because of the diluted version I cast on you earlier. It acted as a -" he waved his hand, trying to remember the word - " a what is it? The Muggle thing. I got one as a baby."

"Inoculation?"

"Yes. An inoculation."

"Did you do it on purpose?"

Severus looked up, and her face was still serious but also suffused with a warmth and a kindness that he hadn't seen for a long time.

"No," he said. "I told you, I just wanted to trick my, uh, the Death Eaters." Then, as an afterthought, he added, "Happy accident."

Lily smiled. It wasn't the wide smile she used to give him in school, the one that made the whole world fill up with light, but it was still a smile, and Severus' heart fluttered.

He turned away from her and snapped open his briefcase, started pulling out vials and jars. "I'll need you to drink something," he said. "A mild euphoria elixir. It isn't Dark," he added, when she opened her mouth to speak.

"I was going to say I remember learning that in school." But her eyes sparkled again, and this time Severus smiled.

"Glad to see you retained some of my notes."

"Of course. I even mixed up a nightmare suppressant. All by myself."

There was a forced lightness in her voice that made Severus pause. "You're having nightmares?"

She didn't answer.

He pulled out a jar of euphoria elixir and turned toward her. Her face had gone pale and drawn again, and she picked at the hem of her jumper with her good hand. He wanted to ask about the nightmares but decided it could wait until after her arm was healed - assuming he was able to heal it. "Here," he said. "Drink half the bottle."

Lily sniffed the jar and then wrinkled her nose. But she drank the potion down in a couple of gulps.

"Oh," she said. "You always put peppermint in it, didn't you?"

Severus shrugged.

"Now what?"

"The counterspell." Severus pulled his wand out of his robe - for a moment he thought he saw Lily tense, but then he decided maybe it had only been his imagination. "Hold still," he said. "Hopefully this won't hurt too much."

"Too much?"

Severus didn't answer, just walked over beside Lily, beside her mauled and rotting arm, and rested the tip of his wand on the center of the flare of red. The euphoria elixir should counteract the despair, but he had nothing to give her for the pain -

Lily cried out, covered her hand with her mouth, but she held still, she didn't jerk away. Severus took a deep breath, and then he began to sing.

The language was Dark, although in truth it didn't sound the way you'd expect a Dark language to sound - Severus had always found the cadence more haunting than anything, beautiful in the way that mist and moonlight are beautiful.

Lily stared at him as he sang, biting down hard on her bottom lip, her eyes shining.

He knew he was hurting her. He almost stopped because of it, but when he turned his eyes back to her arm, the red had gone out of her skin, the spell drawn halfway into his wand, where he could keep it safe until he disposed of it - on some evergreen in a park somewhere, most likely. The tree would crack with rot and collapse into dust within a day or two

Severus's arm began to shake, and he forced his thoughts back on the spell - how long had he been holding it? Lily's eyes were gazed over, her expression soft: all the hallmarks of enchantment. Most of the red was gone out of her arm, but he wasn't sure how deep the curse had worked underneath her skin, and so although his fingers had gone numb and sweat was prickling along his spine, he sang as intensely as ever. He'd never held the spell this long before, he was sure of it, and now his thoughts were drifting away from him, memories unspooling like film, most of them terrible: here was his father, here were Black and Potter, here was his first victim as a Death Eater.

His wand dropped to the floor, made a noise like a thunder crack.

"Sev?" Lily's voice came drifting through the fog of the past. "Sev? What happened? I feel so - Sev!"

He felt her hand on his back.

"Look at me! Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." He lifted his head - it weighed about a thousand pounds, and his throat ached and his temple throbbed, but at least his memories had slipped back down into the darkness. "Could you just - give me a minute."

Lily was kneeling beside him, her expression still cloudy. "What did you  _do_?"

Severus pulled away and stumbled toward her couch, ratty and threadbare, and sunk down into its thin cushions. He rubbed his forehead. Lily stood off to the side, her jumper still pushed up around her neck, revealing her now-healed arm, the smooth pale skin of the side of her stomach.

He could see the bottom part of her bra, as well, the strip of shiny white fabric.

"Does your arm hurt?" Severus asked, voice scratchy and rough. It hurt to speak.

Lily stared at him, looking confused. Then she blinked. Her expression crystallized. "No," she said. "No, it doesn't -" She lifted her arm up, pulled it across her chest. "It's gone. The bruising and the -" Her eyes came back to him. "You healed me." Then she slipped her arm back into her jumper.

Severus shrugged. Pain stabbed at the place between his eyes. "Told you," he said.

"God, Sev, what's wrong with your voice?"

"The spell - the singing -" He stopped. Her face had gone pale.

"Dark Arts," she whispered.

"A Dark counterspell, yes. It only drew from me." He closed his eyes to block out her anger - he couldn't deal with that now. Speaking exhausted him. "Not you."

There was no answer except for a long crackling pause, and then footsteps. Severus opened one eye, then the other, too exhausted to be wary, knowing he shouldn't let his guard down. But Lily had only gone over to the kitchenette area across the room, where she'd set a kettle to boiling on the narrow little stove. She pulled a few canisters out of the cupboard, a pair of mismatched teacups. All by hand. Something about that amused him, made the pain diminish slightly.

She brought the tea back over to the couch. Handed him one teacup - it was cracked, the flowers around the edge flaking. The tea smelled of lemon and some herb he didn't recognize, something green and musty. He didn't drink right away, just looked at Lily over the edge of the cup.

"I'm not going to poison you," she said.

Severus looked down at his tea. It was the color of river water.

"Go on. It'll help your throat."

_Unlikely_. But Severus drank anyway, and the warmth was a comfort if nothing else.

They drank in silence. Ice pinged against the windows. The radiator tucked away in the corner rattled and hissed.

"Thank you," Lily said.

Severus drained the last of his tea and set the cup on the floor. He didn't look at her.

"Not just for my arm," she said. "For the night at the Dog and Duck -" Her voice trailed away. "Thank you."

Something swelled up inside Severus, something bright and warm, like summer rain showers, the sun refracting off a thousand drops of water.

"I will never let you die," he said.

Lily lifted her head. Her hair fell around her shoulders. She opened her mouth, closed it.

"Why do you have nightmares?" Severus asked.

"What?" She didn't ask why he changed the subject - good. He didn't feel like explaining himself. Really, he wasn't entirely sure why he had said it.

"You said you made nightmare suppressant."

Lily picked up the teacups and carried them over to the sink.

"Does it work?" Severus asked. "The suppressant?"

The twinkle of ceramic against stainless steel. Lily walked back across the room, picked up a pack of cigarettes off a table near the window, lit one. She stood for a moment, cautious, smoke ringing around her head.

"Yes," she said. Then: "At first."

This is exactly what Severus expected.

"Had you ever seen someone die before?" he asked.

He realized too late that this was the wrong to question to ask. Lily's eyes went wide and she trembled and leaned up against the wall for support. But he needed to know - there were some maladies in the world the Dark Arts were better suited to than healing magic.

He began to try and explain himself, but Lily interrupted.

"No," she said. "Had you?"

Severus stopped. He  _should_  lie.

"Yes," he said.

Lily dragged deep on her cigarette.  _She knew_ , he thought.  _Of course she knew_.  _You're a fucking Death Eater._

"Let me give you something," Severus said. "For the nightmares. Better than nightmare suppressant - it'll dull them down to insignificance. Lasts longer, too."

"Do you have nightmares?" she asked. "About the things you've done?"

This time Severus did lie.

"Sometimes." He did not mention his Occlumency, the walls he built for himself inside his own head. Maybe if he didn't have that, there would be nightmares. It was impossible to say.

"And you  _have_  done things - you've hurt people - "

"I'm not talking about this." Severus stood up and the movement made his head scream, made his spine twitch. Images flashed through his head: the Ministry man shrieking in agony, the nameless woman lying slumped on the floor. He ignored them best he could and rummaged through the briefcase until he found the potion he was looking for - a potion to manipulate the mind. He shoved the bottle at Lily, who looked at it the way she might a wasp, or a poisonous snake.

"Get that away from me," she hissed.

Severus scowled at her. He slammed the bottle onto the table, yanked out a parchment and quill, and scribbled the spell instructions. "I know how talented you are at stealing my notes," he said, and he could feel the nastiness in his voice but he didn't care. "I'd suggest you take extra care with these."

"I'm giving that to the Order," she said.

"Oh? And what will brave, valiant James Potter say when he hears you can't stomach a few  _dreams_ -"

Lily picked up the ashtray and threw it. Ash arced out like a comet's tail, silvery in the winter light. Severus kept writing. He didn't even flinch. The ashtray missed by half a meter and shattered on the wall behind him.

"At least James Potter isn't a murderer," she said.

Severus froze, quill hovering above the parchment. Those words hurt him in a way he had thought no longer possible. Rage flared like a sunspot inside his head, but he kept his mouth shut and scrawled out the rest of the instructions, the letters thick with blotted ink.

When he pulled out his wand, Lily paled, but he only used it to cut away a lock of his hair.

"Don't lose that," he said, dropping his hair on the parchment. "I doubt you'll  _deign_ to come fetch another. Wouldn't want to be seen with greasy little Snivellus, would you?"

Lily suddenly looked ashamed. Severus grabbed his briefcase, for once not caring if the bottles broke and the ingredients spilled, and stomped towards the door. His head had started to hurt again. His throat felt like fire.

When he stepped out into the hallway, he thought he heard crying.


	8. Snape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter involves prostitution.

After he left Lily's apartment, Severus Apparated to Nettlesong Alley. He did not want to go home, and Nettlesong Alley was a place for the practitioners of the Dark Arts, a place where no one would look upon his work - his attempts to  _help,_  to  _heal_  - with revulsion.

No one would call him a murderer here, either.

Severus stalked down the street, shivering beneath his coat. Nettlesong Alley was hidden away in Haxby, not far from Dorny at all, but it seemed even colder here, as if the air molecules were all frozen into place. He didn't know where he was going, but he stomped past the pub and the bookstore, his usual haunts, and kept going all the way down to the place where the alley dead-ended into a murky green lake, and the only place of business was a brothel called Madame Apollina's House of Stories.

He'd been here once before.

That first time, it had been summer, and summer comes even to places like Nettlesong Alley: the lake had been ringed with river reeds and cat-o-nine tails, and the water was emerald in the sunlight. Severus had just proven himself to the Dark Lord for the first time, and one of the other Death Eaters, a man named Andrew Rufford who claimed to be a descendant of the Dark wizard Nemo Eldritch, brought Severus here after learning that Severus was a virgin.

"Nothing like a woman after battle," Andrew had said, as if they were talking about hopping over to a pub. "You'll see." And Severus had agreed, because he had already lost Lily and he was a Death Eater now. And also because he wanted to forget what he had done, two hours earlier, in the dim caverns of the Ministry of Magic.

It even worked, briefly, in a bright sun-filled room that smelled of the spells used for cleaning, as one of Andrew's favorites touched Severus with bored deftness. But afterwards Severus had thought about Lily, and he never spoke to Andrew again.

He didn't know why he came here today, in the dead of winter, the lake frozen over, the river reeds turned to seed and buried deep in the ground. He didn't know what he wanted. But he walked up the steps to front doors, and he went in.

The entrance hallway was empty and dark, but strains of music floated in from the main room. He could hear laughter every now and then, women's giggling. The hallway seemed to go on forever, and when Severus finally stepped into the main room it was a relief despite the volume on the Muggle stereo - they were playing a Velvet Underground record. So much for blood purity.

For a long time no one paid any attention to him. A pair of girls danced in the center of the room, their bodies transforming into streaks of light and then back again. A long lean boy, shirtless and pale, leaned against a wall, levitating a coin above his hand and looking bored. A redhead pushed through the spangled curtain that led off to the back rooms, and for a moment Severus's heart lurched - but she had a thin sharp face and thin sharp body, nothing like Lily at all.

And then he saw the girl lounging in the corner of the room. She was sitting sideways in one of the velvet chairs, her head dropped back, one foot swinging in time to music. She had black hair, but Lily used to always sit like that when she listened to records. She would always close her eyes and sway in place.

Severus walked over to her.

The girl lifted her head before he said anything and smiled.

"Hello young man," she said. "You look like you're dying."

"What?"

"Broken heart?" The girl tapped her chest, then twisted around so she was sitting in the chair properly. "I can help with that."

Severus didn't say anything.

The girl leaned forward, eyes narrow, like she was appraising him. "What're are you looking for?" she asked. "Lemme guess: blonde? Pureblood? Kinda out-of-your-league?" And then the girl smeared and blurred and metamorphosed into a tall, thin woman, her face regal, her platinum hair wound up in the style of the Lestrange family. Her clothes were different, too: she wore a robe now, tasteful and expensive-looking.

The briefcase dropped out of Severus's hand. Of all the places to find that sort of innate magic -

"No?" the girl asked, and even her accent had changed, become crisp and proper and high-born. "Someone you met at school, then? I bet you went to Hogwarts. So did I, 'til they kicked me out." She was blurring again, her voice rippling and changing. "Gryffindor?" She smiled up at him. She had freckles now, bobbed brown hair, red Quidditch robes.

"Stop it," said Severus.

The girl pouted. "You don't like either of those, just show me a picture, babe." She pressed forward and reached out one hand to touch Severus's face, but he grabbed her by the wrist and pushed her away. The sleeve of his robe rode up his arm.

When she saw the Dark Mark the red robes and the bobbed hair dissolved away, and there was just the girl, with her tangled black hair and her transparent negligee and her pale, frightened face.

"You're one of them," she whispered.

Severus pushed his sleeve back into place. The girl's eyes were wide and bright with fear. The music droned on and on in the background. He wondered if anyone else had noticed, if anyone else even cared. And he thought about how there had been a time, in those last few months at Hogwarts, when he had daydreamed about creating this sort of fear in others. He had imagined that if he could get people to fear him, instead of scorn him, the whole world would open up. He had imagined that this was the secret to happiness.

He didn't think that anymore.

"Don't be scared of me," Severus finally said.

The girl trembled and then she shook her head, just once, the way people did when they were pleading.

Severus picked up his briefcase and left the brothel.

He made his thoughts blank, knitting the shields so tight that even he couldn't see past them. He walked back out the hallway without seeing anything, walked out onto the brothel's porch. The cold seemed to freeze him in place.

He realized that it was snowing.


	9. Lily

They met up in an empty warehouse in York, James and Sirius and Lily. Remus was there, too, quiet as always, and Peter. Figures. The four of them were never apart in school; why should real life be any different?

At least Remus gave her a shy, friendly smile when she walked in. He even took her coat, like a gentleman, and tossed it over a workbench with the others. They were all covered in thick melting flakes from the snowstorm outside.

"Lily Evans," said Sirius Black, striding across the warehouse, his footsteps echoing off the empty concrete walls. "Heard you want to learn to fight."

Peter laughed, though at least no one else did.

"You sure you're up to it?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Lily asked, and Sirius smirked at her, and she wondered what he was thinking. That she'd been too close to Sev to be trusted? That she hadn't been part of the Order long enough? Or maybe it was just straight-up sexism. She wouldn't put  _any_  of those past him.

"Don't listen to him," James said. "He's jealous that Albus's letting someone else learn the Dim spells."

Sirius clapped James around the shoulders and pulled him down into a mock-fight, and the two of them started squirming around on the floor and laughing. The sight of it was enough to make Lily feel even more tired than she already did - it was like being back in the fucking Gryffindor common room, trying to study for Transfiguration or - or Potions.

"Christ, cut it out," said Remus, which was more forceful than Lily remembered him being in school.

Surprisingly, James actually pulled away and straightened his glasses. "Sorry," he said. "We  _are_  on Order business. Which reminds me - did any of you losers remember to put up the wards? Albus said we needed to be extra careful."

"Already got you covered," said Sirius. "Double layers up and down the block."

"The block?" James laughed. "Don't you think that's overkill?"

"Order business," Sirius said.

Lily sighed. "Maybe we could get started?" She crossed her arms over her chest. "I don't want to be here for hours."

"It takes hours to learn this kind of magic, sweetheart," said Sirius.

James faked-punched him in the shoulder.

"Don't call me sweetheart." Lily slipped her wand out of the back pocket of her jeans and briefly considered slamming Sirius with one of those little hexes the four of them were always using back at Hogwarts.  _On Sev, half the time_. No, she wasn't going to think about him.

"Why the attitude? Moon time, huh?" Sirius winked. "Guess we know who won't be getting that shag tonight." He nudged James, who was busy polishing his glasses, his cheeks pink.

"Oh, go fuck yourself," Lily said. "Because I'm certainly not going to."

Sirius turned bright red and there was a moment of stunned silence - of course Lily Evans had  _never_  used that kind of language in school, at least as far as they knew. In truth she was halfway shocked to hear herself be so nasty, but considering how little rest she'd had the last few nights, all her dreams pulling her sweaty and panicked out of her sleep, it wasn't terribly surprising.

Then Peter started laughing, that high-pitched little giggle of his, and then so did James. Remus half-smiled over in the corner. Sirius looked furious, but who gave a shit about him?

"Shall we?" Lily asked.

Sirius was still scowling at her, but James walked over and pulled out his wand and pressed it horizontally between the palm of his hands, brow furrowed like he was thinking. "So how much did Albus tell you?" he asked.

_Nothing. The way he always does._

"He said something about Dim magic," she said. "Weapons." She wondered if they knew  _why_  she was here, learning all this. Unlikely. Then she wondered if it had ever occurred to any of them to ask.

Just as unlikely.

"Weapons, yeah, that's a good way of thinking about it."

"The problem with the Dark Arts," said Remus, talking from the corner, "is that they create acts of violence. We can defend against them fairly easily, but when it comes time to go into battle, defense will only get you so far."

"You can't block someone to death," said Sirius.

"Death?"

"It's how you win wars," said Sirius.

Lily didn't say anything. Out of all of them, Sirius had always been the most adamantly opposed to the Dark Arts.

"Anyway," said James, squirming a little, like the topic made him uncomfortable -  _And it should, he's the one with the most to lose, the one with a child -_  "Albus just wants us to teach you some of the more basic curses. They tend to cause pain, short enough that it incapacitates the victim and you can get away - "

"The blindness curse is good, too," said Remus. "Simple."

"Right. Yeah." James nodded.

"So you're not going to teach me how to kill anyone?" Lily asked.

James looked down at the floor, and suddenly Lily was thinking about that terrible conversation with Sev, and how she'd accused him of being murderer all because he was a Death Eater - but that was what Death Eaters  _did,_  wasn't it? The killed, they tortured. And yet here she was, talking about killing and torturing with James Potter and Sirius Black, who'd bullied Sev for seven years all because he wouldn't shut up about the Dark Arts.

Her thoughts were already disjointed and strange from not sleeping, and suddenly she felt as if she were looking in a broken mirror, the familiar world made unrecognizable by shattered glass.

"Let's get started," Sirius said. "Won't be a lot of  _practical_  application, if you know what I mean."

Well, that was something. Although Lily had to admit she would have found something satisfying about hexing Sirius into blindness and pain.

What they wound up doing was practicing on an old Muggle department store mannequin that had been enchanted to light up in certain ways if the curse worked. The first time Lily tried out the blindness curse, the mannequin lit up bright red.

Sirius made a noise like a game-show buzzer.

"So what did I just do to him?" Lily asked.

"Dunno. Probably nothing."

Lily learned quickly enough that the Dim spells required more effort - physically and mentally - than any of the magic she already knew. By the time she got the mannequin to light up green, thus theoretically blinding the poor thing, her hands were shaking and she felt the way she had after taking the O.W.L.S, like her brain had wrung itself dry.

Of course, it probably didn't help that she was exhausted and confused before she even started, and had been for the last several days.

They took a break after Lily managed to blind the mannequin, and she slipped on her coat and went outside. The snowstorm had died away but the sun hadn't come out yet. The world looked like a black-and-white photograph.

Lily lit a cigarette and stared out at the snow. Maybe it was the nicotine or maybe it was the landscape, but she felt herself calming.

"You smoke?"

Lily jumped. It was Remus. He wore a ratty-looking corduroy jacket, a faded blue scarf tied around his throat, and he had his hands shoved into his pockets. He was also alone, for which Lily was grateful.

"Yeah," she said.

He nodded at her cigarette. "Did you do that when we were at school?"

"Sometimes."  _With Sev, out in our secret spot in the words, passing the cigarette back and forth between us like a kiss._

"Huh." Remus laughed. "I wouldn't have expected it."

"You didn't know me."

She'd said it without meaning to - her exhaustion again - but Remus just shrugged and said, "Yeah, I guess I didn't."

They stood for a moment, Lily smoking, Remus shivering.

"You're doing well," he said. "With the Dim spells. They're - they're tough, because we had to pull from the DAs, you know. Well not  _we_ , I guess, I didn't write any of them." Remus shook his head. "Albus hates them, you know."

"The Dark Arts?"

Remus peered at her like he wanted to smile. "Both. The DAs and the Dim spells. I can see where he's coming from, but the Dim spells just  _feel_ different, you know?"

"No," said Lily. "I don't know anything about the Dark Arts." Except she did, because Sev had sang that song over her arm, that beautiful haunting song, as mournful as the call of a loon, and now her arm was smooth and painless. It hadn't hurt her, that song, but it had hurt him - he'd collapsed on her couch, and his ravaged voice had croaked and rasped as he asked her about her nightmares. And there was that potion he'd given her, that little glass jar still sitting on her table with his instructions and his hair, and she hadn't looked at it since that afternoon, hadn't touched it, hadn't told the Order about its existence.

"They require sacrifice," Remus said. "The Dark Arts. That's why they're so dangerous. That's why they're so suited to murder. The Dim spells - don't."

Lily looked at him. He seemed sad somehow, distant. "How do you know all this?"

"I studied it. When Albus told us what we'd be learning. I wanted to see the difference." He glanced at her, his hair falling across his forehead in a way that reminded her of Sev, even though Remus looked nothing like him, acted nothing like him,  _was_  nothing like him.

"Oh."

"We should go back inside. I imagine they'll want to start in on one of the pain curses." Remus gave her a long look. "Unless you're not up to it."

Lily wondered how tired she looked. She'd actually put on some Muggle makeup before she came over, trying to cover up the dark circles under eyes. She'd been too tired to bother with a beauty spell. Probably the makeup didn't work the way she wanted it to.

"The dreams go away," Remus said. "After awhile."

Lily dropped her cigarette into the snow and buried it with her foot.

"If you're brave," he said, "they'll go away."

"Yeah?" said Lily. She didn't look at him, but out at the still, muffled street. There weren't any Muggles around but even if there were none of them could have seen her or Remus or even the warehouse. And it was so cold. Without the cigarette smoke she could feel the coldness in her lungs, sharp as glass. "And what if you're not?"


	10. Lily

In her dreams that night Lily was standing by the fence where she first met Sev as a child. The trees rustled their autumn leaves; the air was drowsy with the drone of insects. She was only a little girl but she had a wand and she knew he was coming - when his face appeared in the gap in the fence her heart leapt.

And then she waved her wand and cast the blindness curse and blood poured out of his eyes, his beautiful dark eyes, streaming over his face and down the front of his shirt, and he screamed and screamed and scre-

Lily sat up, her sheets twisted, her body coated in sweat. She knew she'd had worse dreams but this one had been the most vivid, as bright as Technicolor and so strong that she could still smell the tang of blood on the air, the smoky wisp of falling leaves.

Lily leaned her head against the wall and waited to catch her breath. She checked the time - quarter past midnight. She could still hear Sev screaming inside her head. She doubted she would fall asleep again.

God, she wanted to sleep.

She pushed out of bed and padded into the kitchenette. Aguamenti'd some water in a glass and sipped at it. The room was brighter than it had been three nights ago, because of the full moon, because of the snow.

Lily sat down at her table and stared at the bottle of Sev's potion, glimmering there in the weird pale night time. His hair gleamed. She reached across the table and picked it up and it was soft to the touch, like a whisper. She ran it down the length of her arm and wondered what his fingers would feel like in its place.

_Stop it. He's a Death Eater -_

_Yeah, well, you are supposed to be_  seducing  _him_.

Lily set the hair aside and dragged the instructions over to her side of the table. There, in the light of the snow, she read:

_Dip one of my hairs in potion. Don't use your own_  (the last part underlined twice).  _With wand, cast Sleeping spell three times - yes, THREE TIMES._ Here the handwriting changed, became thicker, blotchier.  _Use hair to place one drop of potion on each eye. Sleep will come immediately, so do before bed._

Lily leaned back in her chair, her heart pounding. She wondered if Sev's hair was meant to serve as the sacrifice - all Dark Arts required a sacrifice, isn't that what Remus said? She wondered what would happen if she used one of her own hairs. Would it counteract the effects? No, probably something worse. She'd fall ill, the nightmares would become even more monstrous.

He'd used Dark Arts to heal her arm. She didn't even think that was possible, for the Dark Arts to heal, and yet she had seen it with her own eyes, she had lied about it to Albus and Filemina when she wrote to tell them that her arm had cleared up on its own -  _Must have been a delayed reaction from Horatio's potions_. She wondered if Albus would know better. Part of her wished she could have told them the truth. But the Dark Arts were what evil wizards did, and Lily was not evil.

_Neither's Sev._

_He's a Death Eater! He hates Muggle-borns._

_But he saved me._

With shaking hands, Lily pulled out one of Sev's hairs and dropped it in the potion. She cast the sleeping spell three times. She dropped the potion onto her eyes.

Sleep came on hard and fast, and Lily didn't bother to stumble off into her bedroom. Instead, she curled up on her couch beneath an old quilt her grandmother had made. When her dreams came, she was a little girl and Sev was a little boy and they were standing next to the fence - only this time she cast Avis and birds filled the air, and Sev laughed, and all of it was far, far, far away.

She slept straight on through to morning.


	11. Lily

"And how is your assignment coming along?"

Lily looked down at her hands. She was at Hogwarts, sitting in Albus' office as if she were a student again. The protection spell shimmered across the paintings on the walls, and all those former headmasters didn't seem too pleased that they couldn't eavesdrop on the conversation.

"Fine," Lily said.

Albus regarded her, face serious. "Have you spoken to Severus since the night of the pub?"

Lily hesitated, then nodded. "He - he came to see me. To see if I was all right."

Albus furrowed his brow. "Did he read you?"

"You mean did he use Legilimency?" Lily shook her head. "I would have felt it. I didn't - I didn't feel anything."

For a moment Albus almost looked relieved. She wondered how worried the prospect made him, of Severus finding out ahead of schedule why Lily had let him back in her life.  _Except I'm not doing it for Albus, am I_?

"That's good, at least, although I'm wondering why you didn't feel the need to tell me. Was this before or after your arm healed?"

Lily felt as if she had been plunged underwater.

"After," she said.

Albus stared at her, unblinking. His eyes flicked over to her arm, then back to her face.

"I want you to keep me better informed," he said. "Every time you see him, every time you speak to him, I need to know what happens. I know we've been waiting until your Occlumency is ready, but  _anything_  must be relayed to me. Anything."

Lily nodded.

"Listen carefully whenever he speaks of Voldemort. Memorize what he says. Bring the information to me. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," she said, and her voice was as small and weak as the time she had been caught skipping Transfigurations with Sev - it had been towards the end of their fifth year, and Sev had been sulking about going back home, and they'd snuck off to the woods and laid out in the grass and talked, although she could not remember about what. She had laid her head on his chest, she remembered that - she remembered listening to his heart.

"Lily?" Albus said, and she was jerked back to the present, everything dark and cold despite the fire roaring behind his desk. "I would remind you that you are sworn to obey -"

"I  _know_." She frowned.

"Then you won't balk when I tell you that you will not decide for yourself if this mission becomes too dangerous. Do not try to interpret any information he gives you about Voldemort. Repeat it to me  _word for word_. And if I decide that Severus' loyalties can not be swayed, I will put an end to the assignment. But you  _will not_. You will continue on until I tell you otherwise. Do you understand?"

"I understand everything you tell me."

Albus leaned back. "Of course you do." He paused. The firelight danced across his face, orange and scarlet and gold. Gryffindor colors. "How's your training coming along?"

"Fine. The spells aren't so difficult once you get used to them, although Sirius and James -"

"I meant your Occlumency training."

_That_. Lily had only gone once. Portia was about Lily's mother's age, and kind-looking, and she had promised not to burrow too deeply into Lily's head as they practiced. It hadn't been terrible - Lily already had some experience with Occlumency, after nine years of Sev's friendship - but towards the end Lily had let her shields slip, and Sev had been behind them, standing in the doorway of the Dog and Duck covered in ice. Portia didn't say anything, but she pulled out of Lily's head immediately, blushing and stammering apologies, not looking Lily in the eye.

"Portia says you have some natural talent."

Lily lifted her head and eyed Albus warily.

"She told me she thinks you're ready."

"What?"

"She didn't tell you?"

_She didn't tell me anything_. And she'd lied to Albus, apparently. Lily didn't have the Occlumency skills to go up against Sev - but was she going to go up against him at all?

Could she lie to him?

Maybe Portia had seen more than Lily realized.

"No," Lily said.

"She contacted me this morning. It was part of the reason I called you out here. Letting Severus see you earlier was dangerous -"

_No, it wasn't_.

"But it seems no harm was done. In fact, his concern for you is an excellent sign. Do you think you're ready?"

"Could I keep him out of my head, do you mean?"

Albus nodded.

Lily wasn't sure she wanted to keep Sev out of her head. "Yes. I think I'm ready."

Albus nodded. "Then go to him."

* * * 

Hogwarts was mostly deserted, emptied out for the winter holidays. Lily took the long way through the castle, letting the stairs carry her away from where she needed to be. She passed the Gryffindor common room, the Great Hall. She stood in front of the windows that looked out into the courtyard, now all covered with snow, recently-fallen and unmarred by student feet.

It occurred to her that this was the castle as Sev had seen it every Christmas - he never went home for holidays. She would always write him letters from her bedroom but she never told him flat-out that she missed him, even though she did. They would mail each other gifts, little things. The owl always came on Christmas afternoon, some hastily-wrapped package from Zonko's clutched between its claws. She had kept every single one of those gifts until the day he joined the Death Eaters.

Lily thought about what Dumbledore had said.

_Then go to him._

_Go to him._

_Go to him._

It was what she wanted, wasn't it? Permission? Not permission to deceive him over to the Order of the Phoenix, but permission to see him again, to have one more chance to memorize the way his hair hang lank around his shoulders, the way his eyes narrowed whenever he thought too hard about something, the way his smiles came out crooked when they came out at all. Permission to thank him for the dulled-down nightmares. For healing her arm.

Lily left the castle and walked to Hogsmeade.

The walk was pleasant but cold - the chill frosted over her thoughts, and for a long time there was just the puff of her breath and the crunch of her feet and the overwhelming whiteness of the snow. She had intended to Apparate as soon as she left Hogwarts' borders, but instead she continued straight on into town, stepping into Honeyduke's.

The witch at the register wasn't Bianca Pontner, the owner from Lily's time at school - this witch looked younger, and bored, and she flipped through a tabloid shrieking about some Quidditch player's affair with a Muggle heiress while Lily wandered the perimeter of the store, calling up memories of every time she'd stepped foot in this shop, Sev always at her side.

After about ten minutes, Lily bought packages of Sugar Quills and Coconut Ice. The cashier never bothered to look up from her tabloid as she collected Lily's money, and so she never saw the tears brimming in Lily's eyelashes. Lily managed to croak out a thank you, and then she shoved the candies into her coat pocket, stepped out of the store, and Apparated away.

She landed in Sev's front yard.

In the snow, Spinner's End was almost indistinguishable from Hogsmeade. Everything was muffled and silent and still. No one was out. The only difference was the icy river churning toward the sea, and the acrid scent of burning coal.

Lily knocked on Sev's door.

She had hardly been thinking when she Apparated out of Hogsmeade, but now she had a moment of panic: what if He Who Must Not Be Named was in there? Or other Death Eaters? The same ones who had seen her die at the Dog and Duck? What if -

Sev pulled the door open, blinked when he saw her.

"What do you want?"

Lily pulled out the Sugar Quills package and held it out to him. He stared at it like he'd never seen candy before.

"I was in Hogsmeade," she said. "Go on, take it."

"Why the bloody hell would you be in Hogsmeade?"

"I don't know. Nostalgia?"

Sev took the Sugar Quills and turned the package around in his hands.

"Thank you for the potion," she said. "It, um, it helped. A lot."

Sev looked up at her, his hair hanging in clumps in his eyes. "I know."

Lily frowned.

"My hair?" Sev said. "Every time you use it, I know."

"And you know that it helps?"

"Of course I do," Sev said. "Otherwise you wouldn't have used it more than once."

They stood for a moment. Lily shoved her hands in her pockets. Her teeth chattered. She didn't want to leave; she didn't want to fulfill Albus's assignment.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Sev stared and didn't say anything. Then he pulled the door open a little wider, and he stepped aside, and Lily stepped in.

She'd never been to his house before. Not even as children. He'd kept her away from it - said he was keeping her away from his parents. But they were both gone now, she knew. His father had died when they were in school, a traffic accident, and his mother had disappeared off to Russia not long after.

"Do you want something to drink?" Sev asked.

"Something warm?" she said hopefully.

"I'll see what I can come up with."

He disappeared into the back of the house, his footsteps receding into silence. Lily shrugged off her coat and sat down on the couch. His house suited him: the walls were lined with bookshelves, the furniture was dark and worn, he kept the curtains drawn. She reached over and tugged on the curtain closest to her, spilling in bright snowy light.

Sev came back into the room with a pair of mugs, each filled with steaming black coffee. He handed her a box of brown sugar and a spoon.

Lily had never cared much for coffee, but it did help warm her up. When she'd drunk about half the mug, she set the coffee aside and turned to Sev, who was sitting in a big, high-backed armchair, staring at her. She took a breath.

And then she spoke.

"Albus Dumbledore wants me to seduce you into joining the Order of the Phoenix as a double agent."

For a long time, Sev didn't move. Then he pulled out his wand and cast a protection ward on his house, the same one he'd used in her flat.

"And why are you telling me this?" he asked. "Because you can't stand the thought of seducing me, even if it's fake?"

Lily heard the bitterness in his voice.

"No," she said. "Because I can't stand the thought of lying to you."

Sev's hand fell in his lap, and his eyes widened, and for a minute he looked as vulnerable as he had that day on the Hogwarts Express, that day Lily first met her current comrades-in-arms, and decided that she hated them.

"You shouldn't have said that here," he said. "The Dark Lord might have heard you."

Lily trembled. "He Who Must Not Be Named can hear everything that goes on in your house?"

Sev's mouth quirked into a smile. "No."

"Are you going to tell him?"

"No."

Lily closed her eyes. She wasn't scared, not really, not anymore. Not of Sev.

"I'm not going to be a double-agent, either."

Lily opened her eyes. "I wasn't going to ask."

"It's too dangerous," he said. "Why does Dumbledore want me, anyway?"

"Because you're an Occlumens. You're the best, he said." She hesitated. "And because he has me."

Sev's eyes glinted with a sudden flare of anger. "You," he said. "He used you -"

Lily nodded.

"To get to me." Sev's fingers tightened around his wand. "The night at the pub. It was him, wasn't it? That cowardly little shit, he tipped them off. I had been trying to figure it out, but I couldn't -" He lifted his wand and blasted a row of books off the bookshelf. Lily ducked.

"You almost  _died_." Sev didn't yell, didn't scream, didn't even raise his voice. He didn't sound angry at all. But there was still something there that reminded Lily of violence. "I will  _kill_  him."

"Sev!" Lily stood up, and Sev looked at her. "Don't say that."

"Why not? It's true." Another blast of wandlight; more books went sailing off the shelves. Lily stalked across the room and yanked the wand out of Sev's hands. He let her, and when he looked at her she saw fear in his eyes, and for a moment she was dazed, and she couldn't remember how to speak.

"I'm - I'm not going to die," Lily said when she found her voice. "He has me under protection. I'm learning Dim spells -"

"Dim spells? The fuck are those?"

"Our weapons. What we use - when we fight. In battle. I can blind someone - " She shouldn't be telling him this. She knew that. But she didn't care.

Sev was shaking his head. "No," he said. "No no no. That shit won't protect you.  _Dim spells_? For fuck's sake." He laughed. "You know what swallows dimness?  _Darkness_." He laughed again.

"Oh," said Lily. "So I guess I should just learn the Dark Arts, huh? It's like fucking Hogwarts all over again -"

Sev jumped to his feet: his closeness was dizzying.

"No," said Sev. "I'm not saying you have to become a Dark witch. But one or two spells -

"No!"

"Dark magic healed your arm," Sev said. "Dark magic stops your dreams from tearing your apart."

Lily looked down at his chest, remembering how it felt to lay her head there and listen to his heart beating.

"Don't be a fucking hypocrite, Lily. Don't be like the rest of them."

Lily yanked away from him. "Don't call them hypocrites."

"Please. I saw Black kill that shitstain Uric the night at the pub."

Lily faltered.

"Sirius is different," she said.

"No he's not." Sev scowled at her. "They're soldiers, right? What do you think soldiers do?"

Lily didn't have an answer to that.

"Let me teach you," Sev said. "Just enough to defend yourself - learning a few Dark spells isn't going to make you a Death Eater. The two have nothing to do with each other."

"Oh?" said Lily. "So I guess you joined with You Know Who for all that blood purity bullshit?"

"That has less to do with it than you would imagine," Sev said.

"What? That has  _everything_  to do -"

Sev held up a hand. "I'm a Death Eater."

Hearing him say it, her stomach turned itself into knots.

"I follow the Dark Lord. I wear his Mark on my arm."

Lily skin went cold and clammy.

"But you - you're the most important person in the world to me."

The silence that settled around the room was thick and choking. Lily collapsed on the couch. She tried to remember how to breathe.

"My parents -" she whispered.

"I don't care. I never did." Sev sat beside her, his elbows digging into his knees. "I wanted to practice the Dark Arts. But I bloody well couldn't do it with Dumbledore's lot, could I?"

Lily had nothing to say.

"You want into a club, you have to say the password." Sev slumped back. His hair flopped down into his face. "You are constitutionally incapable of evil, Lily Evans. You can still learn Dark magic. Then you can go around cursing all the evil Death Eaters you want, only this way you'll actually get some of them."

"Except for you." Her voice cracked.

Sev looked over at her.

"I wouldn't curse you."

"I know."

And then Lily laid her head on his shoulder. She had no reason for doing this other than that she wanted to. And although she couldn't hear his heart beating, she could feel the solidness of his body beneath her, and for the time, that was enough.

Sev put a hand on her knee, soft and tentative, and she took it in her own before he could snatch it away.

"You can teach me," she whispered.


	12. Snape

Lily was late. She had promised to come to his house by ten, and it was nearly ten-fifteen and he hadn't even heard from her. No owls bearing notes, no faces appearing in the fireplace. Severus paced back and forth in front of his bookshelves, drumming his fingers against his thigh, wondering if she had been delayed or hurt or captured -

Or maybe she just changed her mind.

He stalked up to the window and yanked the curtain aside. The snow had turned grey from the ash in the air and the trample of hundreds of Muggle feet as they trudged up and down his street: going to the factory, leaving the factory. A car drove past. A hunk of ice slid off a tree branch and shattered on the black asphalt in its wake.

Severus cursed and dropped the curtain.

He didn't like the thought of her coming to him, coming to his shabby little house in its shabby little neighborhood. As children he'd always gone to her house in the suburbs, or they had met halfway, at a broken fence near the nicer part of the river. But he also knew it was safer here, since he'd threaded so many wards and enchantments through the walls of his house that he always knew when someone was coming, he always knew who was standing at his door or who was trying to listen in.

Maybe that was it. Maybe she'd decided she couldn't stand coming back to Spinners End. For that, he couldn't really blame her.

A knock on the door; the enchantments twinkled. It was her.

Severus's heart started pounding, and he took two deep breaths before he pulled the door open. She smiled when she saw him, although he thought she looked afraid, too.

He wondered if there would ever be a time when she would look at him without that faint imprint of fear.

"I'm sorry I'm late," she said. "I felt like taking the trains. I wasn't thinking how  _crowded_ everything would be this close to Christmas."

Of all the possible scenarios to explain her absence, that hadn't even crossed his mind.

"I don't understand that," Severus said. "But okay."

"What? I like the trains." Lily stepped into the house and slipped off her coat. Then she stood with her arms crossed in front of her chest, peeking around at his living room. She met his eye, looked away.

"We should probably get started," Severus said. "I have a virgin tied up in the back. You'll need to cut out her heart."

"That isn't funny."

"It's a little funny."

"No, it's not."

Severus gave her a smile, which she did not return although he could see the sparkle in her eyes that meant she wanted to. "Come on," he said, and he led her into the room he used as his study - the room that had been his bedroom when he was younger, when he lived here with his parents. For eighteen years he'd created magic in that room; the walls and the furniture were soaked in it, stamped with the residue of all the spells and hexes he'd developed over the years. It seemed the best place to teach Lily how to defend herself.

Severus had set up his desk in preparation - he'd brought a second chair in and lined it up next to his, he'd laid out parchments with lists of instructions and incantations, set up a stack of moldering old textbooks he thought might be useful. Lily stopped in the doorway and stared. Severus suddenly felt embarrassed.

Lily laughed. "I feel like I'm back at Hogwarts."

Severus smiled at her, his hair hanging into his face.

She sat down at the desk and Severus sat beside her. "I'm going to teach you blocks first," he said. "Minor things. Then when we'll move onto offenses." He paused. "You do realize the difference between the Dark Arts and regular magic isn't a question of  _evil_ , right? Was I able to bore that into your skull the other day?"

Lily looked at him coolly, almost but not quite smiling. "I remain dubious. But are you going to tell me the real difference is sacrifice?"

Severus stared at her.

Lily grinned. "I know things too, Severus Snape."

"Where'd you learn that?  _Albus_?"

Lily shrugged and winked.

"Well, yes, that is what I was going to tell you." Severus couldn't decided if he was surprised or annoyed or pleased or all three. "Sacrifice doesn't just mean death, though. Remember that. And the sacrifice can be that of the caster -"

"Your hair," Lily said brightly.

_Yes, my hair, and my peace of mind before that_. He thought about the despair crashing over him in waves as he'd sung her arm to health. The despair, and the guilt.

"- the caster, or the person the spell's cast upon, or a third party. This makes the Dark Arts ideal for violence, as you've seen -" Severus stopped himself, picked up a piece of parchment. "This is a basic shielding spell. The Dark Arts are more powerful than regular magic generally, because of their sacrificial nature. This one is no different."

Lily read over the instructions. "I don't understand," she said. "If I sacrifice part of myself, I'd just be weakened -"

"Um, well, that's why the sacrifice in this case is the intended victim - the wizard you're blocking."

"Oh."

"You'll be casting this on someone who's trying to  _kill_  you, Lily."

"I know, it's just -" Lily set the parchment on the desk and smoothed it down with her hand. "I don't know if I can do this."

"You won't kill him," Severus said. "It might hurt him, but it'll be a Death Eater, right? Unless you plan on casting this on Black and Potter. Now  _that_ I'd like to see -"

"Oh, stop it." Lily frowned. "How I am even supposed to practice this?"

"You'll practice on me."

"What!"

"You have to learn somehow."

"I don't want to hurt you."

Severus blinked. His chest tightened. "I've been through worse," he said. "You aren't going to hurt me."

"Sev -"

"It'll be fine."

"And if it's not? What if I accidentally kill you?"

Severus laughed. He didn't mean to, but it came out anyway, and Lily scowled at him. "That won't happen," he said. "If you don't even want to hurt me -" Saying it made his stomach wobble, as if when repeated aloud it might become untrue - "Then you're not going to accidentally kill me. It's impossible."

Lily regarded him darkly. "Are you sure?"

"I know more about this than you. Look, if it'll make you feel any better -" He pushed away from the desk and rummaged around on his potion shelf for a vial of euphoria elixir. "If anything happens, give me this."

Lily held the vial up to the light, which refracted through the glass and the elixir and illuminated her face with a splash of yellow.

"Please," Severus said. "I want you to learn this."

Lily set the vial on the desk.

"I'll try it once."

Severus sighed. "Fine."

The lined up, facing each other, wands drawn. Severus wasn't particularly nervous - he'd gone through this a thousand times before, and with much worse spells and much nastier casters - but Lily's hands were shaking.

Lily closed her eyes. Her chest rose and fell.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

Lily nodded and opened her eyes.

" _Expelliarmus!"_

" _Mala Tonare!"_

Blue light crackled out of Severus's wand. The air sparked and hummed. And then Severus felt an ache in his chest, and he was standing on the street outside Lily's parents' house, and she was saying goodbye.

The shielding spell swelled like an ocean wave, washing out all the colors in the room. When it receded, Lily stood with her wand hanging at her side, her eyes wide, her face pale.

"Holy fuck," she said.

"Told you it was stronger."

"Are you okay?"

Severus looked up at her. The memory of that horrible day had receded with the spell and anyway she was standing in front of him, she was in his house, she had said she didn't want to hurt him.

"I'm fine," Severus said. "Like I told you I would be. Let's try it again."

Lily crossed her arms. "I said I was only doing it once."

"You want to do it again."

She didn't say anything, and he knew he was right.

They practiced for another half-hour or so. The sacrifices she pulled out of him tended to be emotional in nature, as he'd expected, and they all seemed to deal with his memories of her. Not just the day he joined the Death Eaters, but other times that he'd slighted her or hurt her feelings - times he said something cruel about Muggles without thinking, or times he got angry with her for trying to defend him against Potter and Black and the rest of them. It drained him, a little, but afterwards Lily always asked him if he was okay, her eyes full of concern.

After awhile he moved from using regular magic in his attacks to Dark, and he was pleased that her shielding spell continued to hold.

"I think that's enough for now," he said. She seemed tired. "You need to rest."

Lily nodded and dropped her wand onto his desk as she walked over to stand beside him. She looked at him closely, as if examining him for flaws. Severus thought about his greasy hair, the shine of oil in his skin, his fucking  _nose._  She peered into his eyes, her brow wrinkled, and Severus's breath hitched. He was afraid to move. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Trying to make sure you're actually okay," she said. "And not just saying it."

"I wouldn't just say it," Severus said. "I'm fine."

She tilted her head, squinted up at him from another angle.

"Say something insulting about James Potter."

"What James Potter lacks in intelligence he makes up for in sheer arrogance and dunderheaded strength."

Lily stepped back and nodded. "Okay. That sounds like you."

"Satisfied?"

She nodded.

"Do you want something to drink or eat or something?" Severus was sure she would say no; he hoped she wouldn't.

"God, I actually am kind of hungry."

Severus wondered if he had any food in the house.

"I'll be right back," he said.

He scurried off to the kitchen. Lily followed behind him -  _of course_  she did, he should have known better - and leaned in the doorway as he rummaged around through his cupboards. He had a box of Sugar Chex, some cans of tuna fish, carry-out leftovers from the Indian restaurant down the street.

"I'll take the cereal," Lily said. "You do have milk, right?" But she was smiling when she asked.

He did have milk - it hadn't even passed the expiration date yet - and he flicked his wand to get everything in place for her. Lily watched the milk pour itself into the bowl and Severus watched her.

"Sorry," he said.

Lily just laughed. "I like Sugar Chex. I haven't had it in years." And she plucked the bowl out of the air and sat down at his table and ate.

Afterwards, she wandered into his living room, crossed her arms over her chest, and frowned at his front door.

"I don't want to go home," she said.

_I don't want you to leave_. "You can stay here."

She didn't say anything, just kept frowning at the door. Then she curled up on his couch, leaning against the armrest. Severus sat beside her. She put her feet in his lap. She'd taken off her boots but her socks had rows of little blue and yellow flowers knitted into the ankle. He wanted to touch her but he didn't, afraid that it would drive her away.

"Thank you for teaching me that spell," she said.

"Thank you for learning it."

She turned toward him and smiled. Her hair fell in waves around her face, and her eyes were bright green in the gloom of his house.

"Do you remember how you used to read to me out of that fairy tale book?" she asked.

"What?"

"You know. When we were kids. Before Hogwarts. It had all those wizarding fairy tales - I'd never heard of any of them. I thought you were making it up at first."

The memory slipped in quiet as a thief, and Severus remembered it, vaguely - he'd brought the book down to their place by the river, and they'd lain side by side as he'd read the stories to her.

"Yeah," he said. "And you tried to tell me the Muggle fairy tales -"

"But you'd already heard them all at primary school." She smiled, all wistful and beautiful. "Do you still have that book? Do you think you could read me one of the stories?"

"Um, yeah, it's probably around here somewhere." He dug out his wand. " _Accio_  Lily's favorite fairy tale book."

Lily laughed.

A moment or two later the book came fluttering into the room. It dropped at Severus's feet, and when he leaned down to pick it up he set his hand on her leg and her toes curled against his stomach. He flipped through the book's pages, trying to remember which of the stories she liked the best - "The Three Brothers"? "Babbitty Rabbitty"? None of them seemed right.

"The one about the witch who hides her heart in the woods," she said. "And the king finds it because of the magic it creates? That's the one I want to hear."

Severus remembered the story. Remembered how she'd smiled when he finished, when the king gave the witch back her heart. Remembered how the grass around them had erupted with blue and yellow flowers.

He found the page, and began to read.


	13. Snape

Severus and Lily Apparated to an evergreen forest in the northern part of Scotland. It was protected by magic - Dark magic, Severus knew, but he didn't tell Lily that. They would be undisturbed here.

Nearly a week had passed since Severus first taught Lily the shielding spell in the study of his house. Since then she'd learned a handful of minor Dark curses, similar, he gathered, to the Dim spells she'd been learning with the Opposition - curses to cause pain and so forth.

_Dim spells_. He still wanted to laugh at that name.

"Why are we practicing out here?" Lily asked, wrapping her arms around her chest. Her breath came out in little white puffs and everywhere around her was virgin snow, sparkling in the weak winter sunlight that broke through the forest. Her hair was the only color in the world.

"We're going to practice on the trees," Severus said.

"The trees."

Severus nodded. He was trying to think of the best way to tell her what spell she was to learn today. She always seemed happy when she was with him, especially after they finished their lessons, and she stayed longer and longer into the evenings, cooking dinner and trying to trick him into dancing to the wireless. He didn't want that all to disappear.

"Why the trees?" Lily frowned. "What are you going to teach me, Sev?"

Severus looked down at the snow as he spoke. "You're going to fight against people who will try to kill you," he said. "You should know how to kill them back."

The silence was resounding.

Severus forced himself to look over at Lily. She was staring at him, her arms still wrapped around her chest. Her face completely blank.

"What are you going to teach me?" she whispered.

"A way to kill without pain."

Lily didn't move, didn't react.

"The curse the Opposition fears the most," Severus said, trying to choose his words carefully, "is not the worst thing that can happen you."

Still no reaction.

"I mean, it's not the worst  _death_  that can happen to you. When it was created - a couple of thousand years ago, I think - it was intended to be an act of mercy."

"Mercy," Lily said. She had a strange look on her face, and for a moment Severus considered dipping into her thoughts, not to linger, just to see the depths of her revulsion. And if she Apparated away, he would know where to follow -

No. That was a violation.

"Yes, mercy. Why else would you create a death that was painless and instantaneous?" His voice was sharp. "The Death Eaters'll be attacking you with worse. They have spells that will flay the skin from your bones, spells that will drown you in the moisture in the air - and drag it out for hours instead of minutes. All of them irreversible once cast."

She didn't Apparate out of the woods, but her cold expression glinted like the snow.

"I'm not doing it," Lily said. "It's  _unforgivable_. One of the three - "

Severus rolled his eyes. "It's also the easiest to learn, and so it's the first killing curse a student of the Dark Arts learns when he embarks on that particular path. That's why it was deemed unforgivable."

Lily didn't answer.

"You grew up in the Muggle world. You read the fucking newspapers. You can't expect me to believe that you really think the Avada Kadavra is the worst way to die."

Lily took a long time to answer. The wind picked up, and the trees rustled and whispered, and snow swirled up amongst their branches and clung to Lily's bright hair.

"But to take a life at all -"

"Of someone who wants to take yours! Lily, listen. You don't have to use it. I just want you to know it. Just in case -"

Lily took a faltering step back.

"You know something," she said.

"What?"

"You know something." Her voice pitched higher and higher, edging over into hysteria. "Something about You-Know-Who. He's going to attack, isn't he? He knows about the Order -"

Her words, her panic, echoed out across the woods. Severus darted forward and grabbed her by the shoulders, not wanting her to flee. She let him.

"No," said Severus. "I told you I wouldn't let you die."

Her body slumped. He reached over and, with a shaking hand, pushed aside a strand of hair that had blown into her eyes.

"If the Dark Lord was going to attack the Order," he said. "and I knew about it, I wouldn't be teaching you curses. I would be hiding you." She blinked at him. "I would be sending you to, I don't know, fucking  _Australia_. Someplace where you would be protected."

Lily stared at him, a hardness present in her features that he'd never seen before.

"What if I wanted to fight?" she asked.

"Then you would need to  _fight_. And if you're fighting Death Eaters, that means fight to kill."

"Sirius knows how to kill," Lily said.

"I know. I saw him do it. I'd bet Potter does too, and the other two, Lupin and what's-his-face. Pettigrew. All of them."

Lily looked off in the distance. The hardness had slipped out of her features. She was Lily again, the Lily he knew.

"And we'll practice on the trees?" she said softly. "Not on an animal or on a - a person?"

Severus shook his head. "Just the trees."

Lily looked around, as if seeing the forest for the first time. The trees swayed in the wind, snow dusting through the air. Then Lily turned to Severus, and she nodded. "Okay. Just the trees."

Severus felt relief rush through his body.  _She agreed, she agreed_. Maybe she would never bring herself to use it but if she just knew how, if she could face the Death Eaters on their terms instead of the Opposition's, all wishy-washy good-light  _bullshit_ , she would survive this war.

And for what? To be eradicated by the Dark Lord as a Muggle-born?

Severus pushed the thought down, buried it beneath his shields.

"You know the incantation," Severus said. "But you can't just say the words and expect it to work." He pointed his wand at a tree a few yards away and said, " _Avada Kedavra_." Green light flared out of his wand and snow exploded out of the branches but the tree still lived.

"Why didn't it work?"

"Because I wasn't trying. You have to concentrate. Remember with the minor curses, how you had to be careful not to draw on yourself for the sacrifice?"

Lily nodded.

"Well, that's not so important here, unless you want to die for some reason. You're suicidal, I don't know. Then the curse might read you as the sacrifice. I'm not sure. I'd have to look it up. But as long you want to live, the curse isn't going to latch onto you."

"That's good," said Lily. "I guess."

"Well, it just means that a failed curse isn't going to sap the sacrifice out of you, it's just not going to work." He hoped. It was possible she might be stricken with despair, but that hadn't happened so far, not with any of the minor curses. She was stronger than she thought.

Severus pointed his wand at the same tree. He took a deep breath; the shields clicked into place. The last time he'd cast the Avada Kedavra, it had not been at a tree.

Green light spread through the woods. When it cleared, the tree was shriveled and grey, pine needles lying in a ring around its base.

Lily gasped.

"You try," Severus said.

"I don't know if I can do this."

"Nothing's going to happen to you."

She looked him full-on. He hoped that she believed him.

She pointed her wand a tree and held it there, arm quivering.

Severus dugs his nails into his palm.

" _A-Avada Kedavra."_

Green light burst and faded.

And Severus laughed.

The tree that Lily cursed had not only not died, it had sprouted flowering vines amongst its branches and shoots of green grass out of its roots. A single silken spider web glistened in the sunlight.

"What happened?" Lily asked.

"You filled it with life," said Severus. He laughed again.

"What if that had been a person?"

The thought sobered Severus quickly enough. "I'm not sure," he said. "But it would probably have given him strength." He frowned. "We should work on this."

"It's sort of neat." She paused. "With a tree, I mean."

"You won't be fighting trees. Try again. Concentrate."

Lily went through the steps again, pointing her wand, calling out the incantation. This time the tree dropped all its needles. Severus stomped through the snow and sliced through one of the branches with his wand. Green peeked through the bark.

"It's still alive," he said.

Lily came and stood at his side. "I can't do this," she said.

_You have to_ , thought Severus. If Dumbledore ever sent her into battle -

"Try again," Severus said.

She did. She tried again and again and again. Severus lost track of the time, and they were out in the cold so long that Severus ceased to even feel it anymore. Lily's cheeks and nose were tinged in red. The light changed, turned gilded and bright. Dark came so early in the winter.

Lily still hadn't managed to kill a tree.

She came close. She could knock off all the needles easily enough, and more often than not she could kill the older branches as well, so that when Severus pulled at them they snapped and crumbled in his hands. But she never eradicated life completely.

"Do I really need to know this?" she asked him halfway through their session. She was huddled close to him -  _for warmth,_  Severus reminded himself - and she kept blasting the snow around with her wand, forming it into big shapeless piles. "Do you really think it's the only way I'll be able to fight the Death Eaters?"

"It's not the only way," Severus said. "Just the most effective."

And so she tried again. When she half-killed all the trees within their vicinity, she lay down flat on her back in the snow.

"What the hell are you doing?" Severus asked. He stood over her, his arms crossed.

"Lying in the snow."

"I can see that."

"I want to take a break. Lie down with me."

"I don't make a habit of rolling around in frozen forest slush."

Lily laughed, her voice twinkling and breaking against the silent shivering woods.

"You need to keep practicing."

"You push too hard," Lily said. She balanced her wand on her stomach and stretched out her arms and then waved them up and down in the snow. "This is how Muggles create magic."

"Oh,  _get up_." It might have been charming if he wasn't so concerned about her learning this stupid fucking curse - he could see the thin pink line of sunset through the trees. It would be risky to come out to these woods again, and there was no where else she could practice, unless he convinced her to try it out on spiders or flies. Which, knowing Lily, seemed unlikely.

Lily used her wand to levitate herself out of the snow, and she landed beside Severus. "Look," she said, one arm twisting around behind her back, trying to dust off the snow. "I transfigured an angel."

Severus looked at the dent in the snow where her body had been. Then he waved his wand and the snow disappeared from Lily's clothes.

Lily pouted. "You're no fun."

"We have to leave before nightfall and you haven't even killed a tree yet."

Lily looked at him, her face suddenly solemn. "Fine," she said. "I'll kill a fucking tree for you and then maybe we can pretend there isn't a war going on for five minutes. What do you say to that?"

"Forgetting about this war is dangerous, Lily."

Lily blinked. Then she turned away from him and trudged through the snow and fallen pine needles, towards a knot of live trees. Severus followed behind her. She stopped, held her wand out in front of her body, her face twisted up in concentration.

_Please_ , he thought.  _Please, just let me know you have some chance of protecting yourself -_

" _Avada Kedavra!"_  Lily said.

The light pierced through the tree's trunk. Pine needles exploded in a dark cloud. But when Lily walked over to check the wood, the tree was still alive.

The look she gave Severus was dark and impregnable.

"It's pointless," she said.

Severus could feel his anger bubbling up inside himself. He jerked away from her, afraid that if he spoke he would say something he regretted. His anger wasn't even directed at her, it was at wizarding Britain, the whole lot of them, for starting this stupid fucking war and putting Lily in danger. All he wanted was for her to kill a tree, but if she couldn't kill a tree then she would never kill a Death Eater.

God, he hoped she'd never have to kill a Death Eater. He hoped she never be in that much danger again.

_Why'd she have to go and join the Opposition? Why couldn't she have just kept out of it like everybody else? Fucking Gryffindor bravery. I'd rather her be alive than_  brave -

Severus realized he didn't hear her footsteps crunching behind him.

"Stop fucking around. We have to Apparate home before dark," Severus said, turning toward her -

He froze.

Lily had fallen to her knees. Her wand was gone, dropped into the snow somewhere. Her face was white as the woods.

Tears poured over her cheeks, silent and bright, dripping off her chin.

Severus felt his world rip open.

"Lily!" He raced toward her, his thoughts a jumble of fear and shock and disgust - at himself, for forcing her to do the curse over and over when she obviously wasn't doing it right, and now the despair had crept in, because even though it was the Avada Kedavra she'd managed to make herself the sacrifice, a little bit with each casting - that had to have been what happened, there was no other explanation - it was too much, trying to teach her a killing curse - what the  _fuck_  had he been thinking and now he was out here in the woods with none of his potions and none of his books -

"Lily!" It was all he could say. Her name rang out like spells blasts through the trees. He collapsed to his knees in the snow beside her and grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. Tears streamed over her face as strong and sure as rivers. She did not make a sound. Her eyes were full of sorrow and they looked straight through him. How deep did it go, the despair? How much of it had worked its way into her brain, damaging her memory by memory, turning her into a husk, a shell, a broken-down thing?

Fuck fuck  _fuck._

He had studied the Dark Arts since he was twelve years old but all of it, every spell and counter-spell, every curse and potion and bit of arcana, had disappeared. Hopelessness settled over him like a fever. His shields were unraveling, emotions were creeping towards the surface, memories he did not want to access, thoughts he did not want to have. All of them taking him away from Lily, weeping herself into non-existent out there in the snow.

Something silent and small clicked into place in the back of his brain.

"Look at me," he said, and he put his hands on her face and made her look. He wiped the tears away with the rough fabric of his gloves. "Listen to me. You have to. Listen. _Listen._ "

Lily swayed in place, and the tears did not stop, but her eyes tilted toward him and for a moment, he thought he saw the light of her, slipping away from him -

"This first time I saw you," Severus said. "That day by the river. That was the happiest day of my life." His voice cracked. "When you spoke to me - and - and I knew I wasn't alone in the world anymore." There was a strange weight inside his chest. "I had other happy days. Like the day you sat with me on the train instead of Potter and - the others. Or when we snuck off to the Forbidden Forest and found that clearing for the first time - remember? The one we used to always go to when we didn't want anybody to bother us." He couldn't breathe. Lily was still weeping, and he felt a prickle in his eyes and he wondered if he was going to start. "Lily, you have to listen to me, okay? I don't have very many happy memories. Truly happy ones - but the ones I do have - they all - they all involve you."

Something changed.

The emptiness went out of her eyes. The tears stopped flowing. Her hands came up and pressed against his face, and her lips parted, and she looked at him for a long time and he was too scared to ask if she had come back.

Then she kissed him.

They had kissed once before, as children, brushing their lips against one another for a few quick seconds in the bland summer twilight of the suburbs. This was different.

Her arms twined around his neck, and she leaned forward, still on her knees, and pressed her body against his. For a moment Severus was too startled to move. But then the warmth of her kiss spread through him, and he kissed back, cupping her face with one hand. The kiss was slow and soft and not anything like the way he'd imagined it, because it was better, because it was real.

She pulled away. Her eyes were red but dry, her cheeks flushed, her hair damp with melted snow. She gazed at him. Severus ran his hand down into the curve of her neck. He could feel her pulse fluttering through his glove.

"I don't want to practice anymore," she said, her voice small and weak and hoarse. "I'm sorry."

He nodded, smoothed down her hair. "Don't apologize."

Then he Accio'd her wand to his hand, pulled her into his arms, and Apparated the both of them away.


	14. Lily

Lily lay in Sev's bed, the blankets pulled up to her chin, and thought about the kiss.

She replayed it over and over in her head - the feel of his mouth against hers, shy and hesitant, the way his gloved thumb had rubbed at her jawline. Her body flushed at the memory, and she was glad that his kiss had drowned out the other thing that happened, that horrible swell of misery.

Sev knocked at the door and stuck his head in the room. "How do you feel?" he asked. He had a cup of tea, steaming in his hand.

"Better," Lily said. She pushed herself up, drew her knees into her chest. Sev handed her the tea and then stood awkwardly beside the bed, his hands fiddling with the sleeves of his robes.

"You can sit down," she said. "If you want."

Sev nodded, kept standing. Lily scooted aside and patted the mattress beside her. He finally took the hint.

She sipped the tea. It was strong and hot and made her feel safe.

"What happened?" she asked.

Sev blushed.

"No, I meant - I meant before that." Lily took another sip of tea and looked down at the surface of it when she said, "I liked it. Kissing you. I know what happened  _there_  -"

She lifted her head. Sev was staring at her, looking, she thought, vaguely astonished.

"I just want to know why I - why I - why everything got so  _dark_." It was the only way to describe it, because if she tried to describe it further she would remember it completely, and that seemed like a terrible idea.

"Well, you were working Dark magic."

"Was that supposed to be a serious answer?"

Sev shrugged.

"Christ, you can be so infuriating," she said. She set her tea on the beside table, next to a stack of old worn textbooks. Her hand shook. "Did you save my life? It felt like you did."

Sev had managed to wash the astonishment out of his features; now his face was blank, emotionless. "I believe so, yes."

A jolt of emotion rippled through Lily's heart. "Thank you."

He looked at her, his eyes black in the shadows of his room. All pupil. "I told you I wouldn't let you die."

Lily leaned against him. He didn't move, so she picked up his arm, drew it around her shoulders. She wanted to feel safe.

"Was it Dark magic again?" she asked. "That you used? It felt so - everything was so confusing." It hadn't felt Dark. She'd gotten used to the feel of the Dark Arts, to the way they seemed to sap the energy out of a room. But this had been - different, and strange, and it had created in her a paroxysm of desire. That's why she kissed him. Well, that, and because she'd wanted to for as long as she could remember.

Sev stared straight ahead, his hair falling into face, hiding him in plain sight.

"Well?" she asked. "Was it?"

"I don't - no, it wasn't." Sev stepped out of the bed. "You should finish your tea."

"Sev!" Lily flung the blankets aside and stood up. Her legs wobbled. "What was it then?"

"Not the Dark Arts."

He stomped out of the room. Lily let out a screech of vexation and followed behind him, though he'd managed to disappear. "What is your problem?" she shouted into the gloom of the house. "You can tell me about your Dark Mark but you won't tell me about this?" She threw open doors, peered around corners, stirred up great clouds of dust.

She finally found him in his study, sitting at his desk, staring down at a book.

"Stop pretending to read," she said.

"I'm not pretending." He didn't look up. "And you should be in bed, not shouting and slamming doors and trying to knock my house down with your Gryffindorian indignation."

Lily crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.

"Tell me."

Sev turned the page of his book.

"God! You're insufferable." She reached over, slammed the book shut, and snatched it away from him. Sev glowered up at her.

"Well?"

"You won't want to hear it."

Lily gaped at him for a second or two, and then she laughed. She collapsed into a chair shoved off in the corner of the room and tucked the book in her lap and laughed. Sev just stared.

"I won't want to hear it?" she said. "Like I didn't want to hear that you used Dark magic to heal my arm? Or I didn't want to hear about how I need to learn to  _kill people_  if I want to survive a battle?" She wanted a cigarette, but they were tucked away in her purse, off somewhere else in the house. "You haven't exactly been reticent about telling me things I won't want to hear."

"This is different," Sev said quietly.

Lily fixed him with her best glare, a glare she'd learned  _from_  him over the years, the one she'd fix on James and Sirius when they were being prats, the one she used on her sister basically every time she saw her. She doubted it would work on Sev, but it was the only weapon she could think of at the moment.

"Could I have my book back, please?"

Lily threw the book on the floor, halfway between herself and the desk. Sev didn't move to pick it up. And for the next few moments, they glared at each other across the room. Lily was not going to be the one to break first.

And then Sev asked, "Did you really like kissing me?"

He kept on his glare while he asked it, but his voice was soft and almost - tremulous. The effect was disconcerting enough that Lily felt all her anger slide away.

"Of course I did," she said.

Sev stood up and walked over to his shelves of potion ingredients. He ran his fingers over the vials and the textbook spines, not looking at her.

"There's a theory," he said. "About a weapon against the Dark Arts. I never went in for it much - it's the sort of thing old wizards like to have endless debates about over elf wine because they've got nothing better to do."

Lily wanted to say something, wanted to snark at him, but she kept her mouth shut and listened.

"The weapon is - well, I imagine your lot puts a lot of stock in it."

"My lot?" Lily narrowed her eyes.

"Dumbledore and the rest of them. Non-Dark wizards." He laughed. "Light wizards? Wizards light? I should start calling them that."

"Sev."

He sighed and picked up a jar of some pale-green liquid and held it up as if to examine it. He still wasn't facing her.

"It's love," he said. "There are some who say the best defense against the Dark Arts is love."

All the air went out of the room.

Sev peered at her over his shoulder, his eyes glittering. "Told you that you wouldn't want to hear it."

Lily forgot how to speak. Back at Hogwarts, especially towards the end, when she was Head Girl and everyone pretended to adore her, and she was so exhausted from not being herself, she used to think, used to hope - but then he'd joined the Death Eaters. And her heart had broken, because Death Eaters were incapable of love.

Lily stood up. She walked toward him and put her hand on his shoulder.

He set the vial down. Stared at the shelves.

"Disgusting, I know," he said. "You can leave if you want. I won't give your name to the Dark Lord, you don't have to worry about that."

"Sev." It came out as a whisper. His body was warm beneath his wizard's robes, warm and too thin.

"I don't want your pity."

Lily pushed her hand forward, threaded it around his chest, and drew him close to her. She put her other hand at his waist. He didn't move except to rest his hands against the shelf. Lily pressed her cheek against his back and breathed in the smell of him, dust and parchment and old clothes, soap and skin. Her hand was on his heart; she could feel it pounding, fast as a hummingbird's.

"Turn around," she said.

He didn't move at first. Then he took slow, shuffling steps, his body twisting, until he faced her.

Lily put one hand on his cheek. His skin was soft, and she could feel the hard bones of his face.

"You love me?" she asked.

He looked at her. His eyes were dark and blank.

"For a very long time." His voice was empty.  _He's blocking me_ , Lily thought.  _His Occlumency_.

"But you're a Death Eater -"

"Doesn't change it."

Lily ran her thumb over his lips. She cast her eyes down. "I - I do too."

Silence. She made herself look up. He didn't look blank anymore. He looked bewildered.

"What?" he said.

"I love you too."

"Is this a trick?"

Lily sighed. "Don't ruin it, Sev."

He scowled.

"Look if you want!" She tapped her temple. "Look in my head."

Sev drew his brows together. "You want me to use Legilimency on you?"

"If it's the only way you'll believe me. Jesus."

Sev lifted one of his hands and touched her hair so softly she didn't feel it. "You understand why I don't believe you."

"Not really."

"This could be an Opposition trick," he said. "Dumbledore and his - "

"I bloody told you about that!"

Sev went on like he hadn't heard her. "Why would you love me when you had people like James Potter chasing after you? And he's in the Opposition as well, it would make more sense -"

"Oh, shut it. James Potter has a kid now and he  _still_ acts like a twelve-year-old. " Lily plunged her hand into Sev's robe - he froze, but she was too angry to blush at the warmth of his body. She yanked out his wand.

"Cast it," she said. "This is  _not_  how I pictured all this happening, but I really should have known better." The thought did amuse her, though.  _If you wanted things to be like a story you would have fallen in love with James Potter._

Sev took the wand and gazed at it wearily. "I don't actually need that," he said.

"Then what the fuck are you waiting for?"

Sev looked at her. She stared at him, bracing herself - he'd read her before, back when they were kids, but it had been different then. He'd only skimmed the surface, and besides, her thoughts had been frivolous, silly. The thoughts of a child.

He slipped inside her.

His presence was cold but not unpleasant - she pressed against him, wanting the contact of his body, and he wrapped his arms around her waist, and for a moment she thought how intimate this was, that it was the way she always imagined sex -

Sev turned bright red.

"Sorry," she whispered.

He didn't say anything, and the coldness slipped deeper, into her memories. She saw what he saw, and he felt what she felt. The disappointment when he was sorted into Slytherin -  _I thought I'd lost you then, the way I thought I lost you when you joined the Death Eaters._  His grip tightened against her waist, and she lay one hand against his chest and listened to his heart tell its own stories. He found those memories of the times they snuck off to their secret place in the woods, and her happiness there - the exhaustion she felt when she got older and become popular, well-liked,  _sparkling,_  and everyone expected her to be perfect and she knew she had to do it or else she'd disappoint them. And Sev was the only one who didn't expect her to be perfect, and no one knew she was more like him than she was anyone else, and that was when she knew that she loved him. And God, the heartbreak when he told her he joined the Death Eaters - did he have to find that memory? Or all the sadness that followed, the chain-smoking and the quiet music and the little round window in her flat?

Sev pulled out and gasped. "Lily," he said. "I didn't -"

"Do you believe me now?"

He held her close, his nose buried in her hair, her face pressed into the crook of his neck.

"Yes," he mumbled. "I didn't know - I didn't think -"

"Because you're so paranoid." She meant it as a joke, but her voice cracked and she thought she might start crying - because she was happy, and she hadn't been happy like this since Hogwarts.

When he kissed her, she forgot about the war, she forgot about the Order, she forgot about everything except Sev.


	15. Lily

Lily spent the afternoon Christmas shopping. She went to the Muggle department stores first, fighting her way through crowds of harried-looking housewives and their screaming children. It was both as awful and as exhilarating as she remembered.

She hadn't gone last year. It'd been too much - the crowds, the music, the lights. But this year, things were different.

She bought a cashmere scarf-and-glove set for her mum and picked out some silver jewelry for her sister, on sale. Petunia would find fault with anything she gave her, so she figured she should expend as little time or energy on her gift as possible. She also bought a little white candle to burn beneath the Christmas tree for her father, the way they did every Christmas since he died four years ago.

It was snowing when she left the department store. Children shrieked and giggled on the sidewalk; cars blared their horns. Otherwise, though, a stillness descended over the city, and Lily took the long way around to the Everthorne Alley entrance, nestled snug between a sex shop and a convenience store.

Everthorne Alley was as crowded as the department store had been, witches and wizards bustling between shops, although here magic kept the snow from falling to the street. Lily missed the silence of it; all those chattering voices made her tired.

Still, she needed to get a present for Sev, and she doubted he would want anything from the Muggle world. Actually, she had no idea what he would want  _at all_ , and so she found herself drifting from shop to shop - avoiding Betty Vane's Robes and Other Magical Garments, of course, the last thing she needed was to get roped into working on her day off - and gazing at all the stores' merchandise, feeling something not dissimilar to drowning.

She spent a great deal of time in the Emporium of Magical Objects, one of those stores filled with random junk that feels like treasure when you set it up on a cloth-covered pedestal. Most of the magic in the pieces felt broken to her, broken or faded or gone completely, and there wasn't anything that seemed suited to Sev anyway. She sighed and pushed her way back out into the crowd.

Eventually she found her way to the bookstore, which seemed such an obvious choice that she had been avoiding it. Still, the scent of parchment and old ink reminded her of Sev, and she went to the Potions section and read through every single title until she found a a very old, very crumbling book called  _Potion-Making in the Eastern Lands_ that cost more than she intended to spend. She pulled it off the shelf and pulled open the cover: it was so old that the illustrations didn't even move, and the words were spelled strangely, and she couldn't understand half of what it said.

"A very advanced text, that one." The shopkeeper had crept on her, a short little man with wiry grey hair. "Quite rare, though, if you're a collector."

"It's for a friend," she said. "He's - he's a potion-maker, an apprentice, and I want to get him something he doesn't already have -"

The shopkeeper's eyes lit up. "Most apprentice potion-makers would curse their own grandmothers for a chance to own a book like this."

Lily decided this was probably an exaggeration.

"It traces the history of the use of plant-based ingredients in the Middle East and Asia - fascinating stuff, and not the sort of thing they teach down at Hogwarts. I imagine your friend would be delighted to get such a gift from such a pretty girl." The shopkeeper's eyes twinkled. Lily smiled like his comment didn't annoy her.

"I'll even take off ten Galleons," he added.

Lily looked back down at the book. It did seem like something Sev would appreciate, if he didn't already own it - but the shopkeeper  _had_ said it was rare.

"All right," Lily said.

The shopkeeper clapped his hands together delightedly. "Let me wrap it up for you."

Lily stepped out of the bookstore ten minutes later,  _Potion-Making in the Eastern Lands_  lovingly shrouded in tissue paper tied together with a blue silk ribbon. There was even a tag -  _To Sev from Lily_. No little curlicue hearts, no smily faces, though she'd been tempted. Just to irritate him.

When Lily Apparated to her flat in Dorny, Albus was waiting for her.

She nearly dropped her packages when she saw him, sitting on the bench outside her building, snow accumulating in piles on his hat. She shoved Sev's book into the bag with her mother's scarf and tried to hide it as best she could.

"Lily!" called out Albus. "So lovely to see you!"

His cheeriness grated on her -  _we both know damn well he's not here to wish me a happy fucking Christmas_  - but she waved back and plastered on a smile and made her way through the falling snow.

"Shopping?" he asked. "Do you have plans for the holidays?"

"I spend Christmas at my mum's."

Albus frowned. "Christmas Eve, too?"

"Yes," Lily lied.

"Oh, that's too bad."

"What?"

"Well, I was hoping you'd come to the Christmas Eve celebration - it's at the Potters this year. We always strive to create light amidst all this darkness."

"Wish I could make it," Lily said, which was also a lie.

"Ah well. Family does come first. Shall we come in out of the snow? I wish to speak with you."

_Of course you_   _do_. But she only smiled and let him into her flat. The radiator had cut out while she was gone and the air was shivery and chilled. She cast a warming spell, which helped.

Albus, of course, cast his silvery-blue silencing spell. Lily placed her packages on the center of the table, where she could see them.

"I wanted to see if you had anything new to report about our assignment," Albus said. "It's been a few days since I heard from you, and I know with Christmas things can slip our minds without us intending them to."

Lily tried to keep her face blank. The last few meeting with Albus had been comprised of some truths and some lies and many, many omissions. Severus was friendly with her. She offered to cook him dinner; he accepted. No, he didn't mention any of You-Know-Who's plans. No, he doesn't seem inclined to defect.

Sometimes she wondered if Albus knew there was more than what she was telling him. She didn't feel him inside her head, but maybe he had other ways.

"I saw him yesterday," she said carefully.

"His house again?"

"Yeah." The back of Lily's throat ached for a cigarette, but she knew better than to light up when speaking with Albus - it would give too much away. "He says it's safer there."

Albus raised an eyebrow. "Does he?"

Lily waved her hand. "He has wards and enchantments five layers deep. I can feel them whenever I go in."

"And what did you do yesterday?"

_I told him I loved him and kissed him until my lips were chapped_. "Played wizard's chess." It was the first thing she could think of. Sev had always hated it.

"A noble game, to be sure. Did you discuss anything? Make any progress?"

"We talked about Hogwarts," Lily said. "Our old teachers and stuff." She thought. "I tried to ask him about some of his friends - Avery, do you remember him? - To see if I could get names, but -"

"That's not your job," Albus said.

_Shit_.  _Well at least if I fuck up that makes it seem more believable, right?_ "Sorry," she said.

"You don't want to arouse his suspicion," Albus said. "Asking after alleged Death Eaters when he knows you're a member of the Order - no wonder he won't speak about Voldemort in front of you."

"He also hasn't killed me," Lily shot back. "Or turned me in."

"Which is an excellent sign. Severus is not a stupid man, my dear, as I'm sure you know. He is quite capable of putting two and two together."

Lily didn't say anything.

"Has he tried to read you?"

Lily felt her face turn hot at the memory of Sev slipping inside her thoughts. Albus tilted his head, face graven, blue eyes serious.

"Um, yes," she said.

"Yesterday?"

"I blocked him," Lily said. "He didn't try - didn't try very hard." God, why did she have to blush over this? She'd gotten better at lying but the memory was too new to push down. She should start using her meager Occlumency skills on Albus.

"So he saw nothing?"

"Nothing important," Lily said. "I think he knew that I knew he was doing it, and pulled away."

Albus stroked his beard.

"It was right when I came in," Lily said quickly. "And he didn't act strange afterwards -"

There was a long pause. Lily could heard the blood rushing through her ears. And then Albus stood up and straightened his robes.

"Fair enough," he said. "I believe you're making more progress than you realize, Lily. I do wish you could come to the Christmas party, though."

"Sorry."

"Perhaps you'll be able to celebrate New Years Eve with us." He withdrew the silencing spell. "A light in the darkness, remember. And hope."

"Hope," said Lily.

Albus smiled, all the graveness and severity gone from his features. "Have a lovely time with your family." A pause. "And keep safe, my dear."


	16. Lily

Sev poked through the canvas bags of groceries and decorations Lily brought over on Christmas Eve. "What is all this crap?" he asked, drawing out a strand of fairy lights with his wand.

"You've never seen fairy lights before?" Lily squinted at the rusted-out dials on his oven. The thing was cast-iron and black as soot and looked about a hundred years old - when she'd cooked for him before she stuck with stovetop dishes, since at least his stove had apparently been updated in the last century. "How does this even work?"

"What? Oh." Sev pointed his wand at it and the iron began to glow red-hot.

Lily pulled the rib roast out of its white paper and set it in the pan she brought with her and rubbed it down with thyme and garlic, the way her mum always did. She sprinkled it with salt and pepper and set the whole thing in the oven to roast for the next few hours. Sev watched her from beside the table, the fairy lights dangling off the table's edge.

"Don't burn my house down," he said.

"And what would you be eating if I wasn't here?" Lily asked, cleaning her hands in the sink. "Stale cereal and burnt toast?"

"Why do you insist on doing everything by hand?"

"Because that's how I learned." Lily used her wand to send the bags of decorations flying off to his living room. "Better?"

Sev fixed her with his dark eyes and didn't say anything. But when she walked past him, out into the hallway, he grabbed her hand and pulled her close and kissed her.

"You need a Christmas tree," Lily said, when they drew apart. She had her hands in his hair - he'd washed it, and it was soft and silky against her fingers.

"I really don't," said Sev.

Lily just smiled. She pulled away from him and walked toward the living room, which was as dim and dark as always. She drew the curtains back with her wand and strung some of the fairy lights from the ceiling and set them to twinkling. Sev stood in the doorway and watched with an air of resignation.

"It looks like you murdered a family of rain sprites," he said.

Lily sparked him with one of the old Hogwarts hexes - he cursed and tried to hex her back, but she blocked him with the Protego charm, and for a moment his living room lit up with minor enchantments, and the wards on the house jangled and whined. Lily ended the battle when she realized she couldn't win, and so she took off running and laughing out the door and into the front yard.

"Lily?" Sev appeared on the doorstep, looking worried. Lily stopped laughing.  _Did he really think I would I just run away?_

"We need a tree," she said.

Sev sighed and pulled on his cloak. Lily Accio'd her coat from inside the house and shrugged it on, then went poking around in the yard for something that would suit her purposes. She'd step outside the Muggle wards if she needed to - unlike Sev, she was dressed for it - but she also liked the idea of staying inside the perimeter of magic, as if Sev's house and Sev's snow-covered yard were the only things left in the world.

"I'm afraid if you expect to find an abundance of evergreen pines in Spinners End," Severus said, "you will be sorely disappointed."

Lily clomped up to a big oak tree, its branches crusted in ice. Only part of it was on Sev's property; the part that wasn't seemed hazier, softened by the invisible lines of the boundary. Lily hacked off a branch with her wand.

"This'll work," she said.

"Oh God," Sev said. "You're going to transfigure it."

"You're just jealous 'cause you can't." She breezed past him into the house, stomping the snow off her shoes as she went.

"Transfiguration is charlatan magic," Sev said. "Worse than divination. It's for those who lack the intellectual capability for the purer magics of potion-making, or possibly arithmancy."

Lily noticed that he did not mention the Dark Arts.

"Then why don't you go potion us up a tree," she said. "And we'll see who gets there first."

She propped the oak branch up against the wall and began uncoiling the spells out of her wand one at a time - first to give the branch temporary roots that sank into Sev's floorboards, then to give it height, and finally to give it branches and foliage. She made that foliage look like green sea glass rather than true pine needles, and when she wrapped the fairy lights around her ersatz pine tree the lights refracted through the glass and stained the walls of Sev's living room with a thousand bright spots of color.

"I see you've moved on to rain sprite genocide now," Sev said.

"Are you incapable of being nice or do you just hate me?"

Sev was suddenly at her side, his hand grazing against her hip. "I could never hate you," he said, and his voice was low and dark.

Lily leaned against him. She wrapped her arm around his waist. "I know."

They stood for a moment, tangled up in each other, looking at Lily's tree.

"It's missing something," Lily said.

"If its purpose is to blind me, well, let's just say you haven't  _quite_  accomplished your goal."

"That's not what I meant.  _Accio_  Sev's present!" And the package from the bookshop settled beneath the tree.

Sev didn't say anything, didn't move or react at all, and for a moment Lily was stricken - but no, they had always given each other gifts. Why would things be different now, just because they had kissed and he had told her he loved her?  _He's a Death Eater now_.

"Wait here," Sev said. He scurried out of the living room. Lily watched him go, sighed, and collapsed on the couch.

When he came back he was a holding a tube of something, wrapped in a sheet from the  _The Daily Prophet_. Half of some wizard's face kept flitting back and forth down the length of the tube.

Sev set the package beside his book and then sat beside Lily on the couch. They didn't say anything, and their hands touched on the cushions between them, and Lily was happy.

For the rest of the afternoon there was no talk of the war or of He Who Must Not Be Named, no discussion of the Dark Arts or the blocks and curses Lily had memorized a week ago. For the rest of the afternoon Sev's house was a light in the darkness.

Lily made Yorkshire pudding to go with the roast, and they ate at the rickety table in Sev's kitchen. Sev opened a bottle of elf-wine - something about it, the name of the maker or the gilded tint of the bottle - made it seem expensive, although really Lily couldn't say one or another. She knew nothing about wine. Still, it was rich and sweet, and it tasted of apricots and roses and honey, and by the time they finished their meal Lily felt as effervescent as sea foam.

"That wasn't terrible," Sev said, folding his napkin on his plate.

"Why, Severus!" She was calling him Severus because the wine made her silly. "From you that's the grandest of praises, like hearing I'm a better Chaser than Avalina Dedworth."

Sev's lips pressed into an amused little smile.

Lily flicked her wand and sent the plates and silverware and wine glasses off to be Scourgified. Then she jumped from the table, grabbed Sev's hand, and dragged him into the living room.

"Presents!" she cried.

"I'm never giving you elf-wine again."

Lily laughed and pulled him down onto the couch with her. She used magic to fetch his book from under the tree and handed it to him. Sev stared down at it for a moment, and his face was blank and she wondered what he was thinking, what he was trying to block out. Her happiness flickered. But then he peeled the paper away, and when he saw the title of the book he smiled - a real smile, bright as sunlight.

"You got this for me?" he asked.

"You don't have it already, do you?"

"No." Sev opened the cover and ran his fingers down the first page. "Where did you  _find_ this? Who did you curse to  _get_ it?"

"What?" Lily blinked. "It was kind of expensive, but nothing - ridiculous. Plus the shopkeeper gave me a discount."

Sev looked at her for a moment and roared with laughter. "Did you go to Diagon Alley?"

"No. Everthorne. Why?"

Sev shook his head. "This book is - extremely rare, and extremely expensive. The shopkeeper must not have realized what he had. If it was at Everthorne Alley, that's not exactly surprising."

Lily fiddled with her jumper sleeve. "Do you like it?" she asked.

Sev turned through the pages. "I've been wanting this book for years. I could never find it."

Lily's heart swelled.

"I can't believe you did. And you just - picked it out at random?"

Lily shrugged. "The man at the store told me what it was about, and it sounded boring as hell. Perfect for you."

Sev peered up at her through his hair. "I appreciate this very much, Lily."

Lily looked down at her lap and smiled

"I'm afraid my gift won't really compare." He brought the package over to the couch. Lily ripped the paper apart with glee, and found a potion vial, filled with a matte white liquid.

"You made me a potion."

"Told you it wouldn't compare."

"Shut it. What does it do?" Lily tilted the vial and when the potion slid down it left a shimmery residue against the glass.

"Drink it and find out."

Lily regarded him with fake suspicion. "Is this a trap?"

"I hope that if I ever have to trick someone into drinking a potion I won't be quite so transparent as to give it to them as gift and then just tell them to  _drink it and find out_."

"I don't really think it's a trap." Lily unscrewed the vial and drank the potion. It tasted like spun sugar. "I don't feel any different."

"Touch your wand to your heart," said Sev. "And cast Lumos."

Lily did as he asked. Her wand didn't light up the way it should have, but she felt a surge of happiness, so strong that the happiness of Christmas was like melancholy in comparison.

"It's a shield against despair," Sev said. "So if anything like what happened before happens again - you'll have protection. If you want to turn it off, just cast Nox."

Lily did, and the magical happiness faded, and the Christmas happiness took its place, and she didn't miss the first at all.

"Oh," she said. She thought about the despair in the woods, how it had almost consumed her. "I'll be able to turn it on and off like that? For how long?"

"Forever." Sev shrugged. "Or until you take the antidote. I made some for you, if you want -"

"I don't want the antidote." Lily touched her wand to chest and cast Lumos again. The happiness flared bright and comforting inside of her. Sev smiled.

"You should look at yourself in the mirror. I, um, I added something - or rather heightened a particular effect - I thought you might like it-"

"Oh God, it made me ugly didn't it?"

"Nothing could make you ugly."

Lily dropped her wand to her side and smiled. The happiness rippled and sparked. His eyes bore into hers and she leaned forward and kissed him, softly.

"Go look in the mirror," Sev said. "There's one in the bathroom." He smoothed down her hair, and Lily did as he asked.

She was glowing.

She had gone to a shop with her mum once and seen a lamp in the shape of a globe, all those countries and oceans illuminated from within. The enchantment of that potion did the same to her. Her skin looked transparent, her face hollow, and every part of her was suffused with light.

Lily stared at her reflection, then lifted one hand and moved it through the air. It left light trails in its wake.

She realized Sev was standing behind her in the doorway. She whirled around to face him, drawing out more streaks of light.

"I can't believe you did this," she said. "For me, I mean - will it really stop - what happened in the woods - if it happens again?"

Sev nodded.

Lily cast Nox against her chest. She hadn't noticed the light until she saw her reflection, but now she could tell the room was darker, dimmer, filled with murky shadows.

"I don't need it right now," she whispered.

Anther pressed smile from Sev, a flash of joy across his eyes.

Lily dropped her wand and rushed forward and wrapped her arms around Sev's neck. They kissed in the doorway, and then Sev pulled her out into the hall, and Lily realized they were kissing their way to his bedroom.

She didn't stop him. She wanted this. She wanted him.

He pulled her onto his bed, still kissing, their bodies moving against each other. Lily felt a warmth spreading through her that had nothing to do with elf-wine, nothing to do with potions that granted happiness and light. They kissed for a long time, and then Sev slipped his hand up under jumper and she felt a jolt like magic.

"Do you want me to stop?" he asked, his voice rough. She shook her head.

His hand moved over her breasts, under her bra. His eyes were locked onto hers. She could hardly breathe. His touch made all the atoms in her body riot, even as she lay perfectly still beneath him.

Sev withdrew his hand and pushed her hair away from her face. She reached for the hem of his robe.

"Lily." He said her name like a prayer. "We don't have to -"

"I want to." She looked at him and slid her hand over the fabric of his underpants. "You want to, too."

"Yes." He kissed her neck, her jawline.

"Have you ever done it before?"

He stopped, and Lily knew that he had.

"It's okay," she said. "I don't mind." Although she wondered who it was - someone in that year and a half they had been apart, surely. It didn't matter. It  _shouldn't_ matter.

"Have you?" Sev asked.

Lily hesitated, though she knew she could not lie to him. She shook her head.

At first Sev didn't say anything. He just stared at her, his eyes like the night sky.

Then he said, "You're the only one I ever wanted."

Lily trembled. She pulled her hand out from under his robe and slowly, fingers shaking, breath catching, began to undress him.


	17. Snape

Severus woke up that night to Lily curled up asleep against his chest, his Dark Mark searing pain into his arm.

For a brief moment he was stricken with the sort of fear that turns you hollow, and he lay unmoving while a cold clamminess spread through his limbs.  _He knows_. But then the shields locked into place, hiding away the fear and panic and even, as a measure of precaution, his memory of a few hours earlier, when she cried out after she showed him how to touch her and whispered his name into the crook of his neck.

_There's no way the Dark Lord could know. Not without seeing me._   _No way at all -_

He had to go him immediately, at any rate. To not go would arouse the worst sort of suspicion; it would bring Death Eaters to his front door, it would send the Dark Lord sifting so deep into his thoughts he doubted even  _his_ Occlumency would hold.

Severus slid out of bed, laying Lily's head gently against the pillow and drawing the covers up over her shoulders. He used magic to find his clothes and fumbled in the darkness to dress. His arm throbbed. Every now and then, smoke rose up off the Mark, and it smelled like the Dark Lord, like burning blood.

He kissed Lily on the forehead and cast a Dark protection spell over his room, giving up a few sense memories of earlier - he didn't want to but it would be safer that way, when the Dark Lord dipped into his head. As he would. As he always did.

And then Severus put on his cloak and Apparated to the Dark Lord's side.

Severus thumped down on the cold marble floor of the ballroom in broken-down Dankworth Manor, a fire burning hot and bright in the fireplace. It wasn't large enough to fill the room with light, and shadows slunk along the walls. The pain in Severus's arm faded away to a dull, persistent ache. The Dark Lord stood in front of a window - stained-glass, though the colors were muddied by the night time.

"Severus," he said in that cold low hissing voice. "I hope I did not disturb you."

"No, my lord." He wove the shields as tightly as he could, tighter than he ever had before. His head was as muddied and dark as the stained-glass windows.

"I've never cared for the holidays," the Dark Lord said. "So many of my children are taken up with obligations. Appearances, you know." He turned and walked across the room toward the place where Severus stood, his hands tucked behind his back, his shields keeping her safe. "What do you think of the holidays, Severus?"

"I've never liked Christmas."

The Dark Lord stopped and smiled just enough that Severus could see the tips of his sharp white teeth.

"Then my calling you tonight is not terribly distressing, is it?"

"No, my lord."

"That's good, Severus. That's good." The Dark Lord continued his path through the shadowy, flickering ballroom. He stopped in front of Severus and looked at him.

The coldness crept into Severus's brain, although it found nothing but loyalty and darkness.

"Sit in front of the fire," the Dark Lord said. "Please. You're shivering beneath your cloak."

It was cold in the ballroom - the fire's heat wasn't enough to fill all that empty space. But the cold wasn't the reason Severus was shivering.

He strengthened his shields and sat down. The Dark Lord stayed standing. The light from the fire seemed to shine through his skin.

"You attended Hogwarts, did you not?" the Dark Lord asked. Of course he already knew the answer, Severus knew that - but still Severus nodded.

"So did I." The Dark Lord smiled, and this time he showed all his teeth. "A long time ago."

Severus knew that, too.

"Did you ever see Hogwarts at Christmastime, Severus? Did you ever stay behind while all your classmates went home to their families, their gifts, their -" he waved his hands - "songs and trees and mince pies?"

"Every year," said Severus.

The Dark Lord dipped his head in acknowledgment. "We are quite similar, are we not?"

Severus didn't say anything. The Dark Lord stared at him, and cold crept into his brain, and Severus sputtered out, "I would never suggest that I could approach your abilities and talents, my lord."

The Dark Lord laughed; the coldness dispersed. "Severus, I really am quite fond of you."

"Thank you, my lord."

"That's why I've called you here today. Not to reminiscence about times long past, sadly, sadly. I've been very impressed with your curse development these last few months. Very impressed indeed."

"Thank you, my lord." Severus's mind was a mirror, blank until the Dark Lord peered inside and only saw himself.

"It pains me to pull you away from such brilliant work, but I believe I've found another task you are equally suited for."

"Oh?"

"Yes. And you'll even be able to go back to Hogwarts. Not as a student of course -" The Dark Lord lowered himself into the chair beside Severus and leaned close to him, as if they were mates, and not servant and master. "I wanted this for myself, some years ago. But Dumbledore would hear none of it. You, though -" The Dark Lord trailed his finger along Severus's chin. "I want you to teach at Hogwarts."

"What?" It came out before Severus could stop it; this was the last thing he had expected the Dark Lord to say. "I mean - forgive me, my Lord, I wasn't expecting -"

The Dark Lord flicked his hand back and forth, as if it were nothing. "You won't just be teaching," he said. "You will be my eyes at Hogwarts, my ears - and my voice, in some ways. We will always need to replenish our ranks."

"What do you want me to teach?" Severus asked. "My lord," he added.

"What would you like to teach?"

Severus didn't want to teach anything: he held the opinion that most people in the world were idiots and consequently hopeless at learning even the most basic of magics. But then he thought about Lily casting the Mala Tonare, the way she'd said  _Holy fuck_ after the spell had withdrawn.

"Defense Against the Dark Arts would be an excellent point of infiltration," Severus said carefully. "The line between the Dark Arts and the defense thereof is a - a thin one, my lord."

"I had the same thoughts, Severus." The Dark Lord smiled. "I know I chose well when I chose you for this task."

Despite everything, Severus could not help feeling pleased.

"And I happen to know there will be a Defense Against the Dark Arts position made available by the end of the school year," the Dark Lord said.

Severus knew better than to question  _how_ , exactly, he knew that. "And when will that be?" Severus asked. "When should I - inquire?"

"Soon," the Dark Lord said. "I will alert you when the time is ready. Until then, continue to develop new spells and curses. I hate the thought of losing my most talented creator."

Severus bowed his head low.

"You may go," the Dark Lord said. "I've no other need of you at the moment. And it is Christmas, after all."

"I've never liked Christmas," Severus said.

"Yes, you told me earlier." The Dark Lord paused. "And why is that, Severus?"

"I didn't have the family and the tree and the mince pies, my lord."

"Ah," said the Dark Lord. "Neither did I." He stood up and extended his hand. Severus stood as well and took it; a spark flowed between them when their palms touched, and the Dark Lord was in his head, cold as ice, cold as death.

The shields held.

"Sometimes," the Dark Lord said. "I believe you are my only loyal servant."

"My loyalty to you," Severus said, "is my everything."

And the Dark Lord smiled once again, and his teeth shone in the firelight, and Severus felt nothing at all.

* * *

It was snowing when Severus landed back in Spinners End, everything silver and pale in the moonlight. The snowfall looked like static. Severus crept back into his house, whispering silencing spells as he did so, careful not to let the door slam in the wind.

"Sev?"

Severus stopped. Lily stepped out of the hallway, her eyes wide and dark, her hair tangled from sleep. She'd wrapped the quilt from his bed around herself, and in the snowy moonlight the bare skin of her legs and the tops of her shoulders glowed bone-white.

"Lily," Severus said. "You should go back to bed. It's cold -"

"Where did you go?"

Severus looked at her. He didn't want to lie. His shields were coming undone as he stood there, memories slipping in one by one: the heat of her body beneath his, the cold firelight in the Dark Lord's manor, the sickness of panic when his Dark Mark had begun to burn.

"I was called," he said. "Let's go back to bed." He pulled off his boots, his cloak.

"Called?"

"By the Dark Lord. You're safe," he added, when her face went ashen. "He doesn't know you're here. He  _won't_ know." Severus pulled her close to him. She leaned against his chest and wrapped her arms and the quilt around him, so that her naked body melted into his clothed one.

"What did he want?" Lily asked.

Severus pressed his face into the top of her head, breathing in the smell of her, lavender and smoke. "You know," he said. "I think he was lonely."

"You really expect me to believe that?"

"Well, it is Christmas." Severus smiled into the shine of her hair. "And besides, I've never lied to you before. Sure as hell not going to start now." He grabbed her hand and led her back into the bedroom, where she crawled under the covers and watched him as he undressed in the dark. For a moment Severus was uncomfortably aware of his body, how thin it was, how pale, even though Lily gazed at him without any cruelty in her eyes.

Lily drew him close to her when he crawled into the bed.

"He also wants me to teach at Hogwarts," Severus said.  _I won't lie, I won't leave things out_.

Lily stroked his hair. "He wants you to be a spy, too."

"You going to tell Dumbledore?"

There was a long pause.

"No," she said. She kissed his cheek. "There's no need. Albus isn't going to hire you to teach at Hogwarts. He knows you're a Death Eater."

Severus smiled in spite of himself. "I suppose I should have informed the Dark Lord about that."

"You didn't?"

"Don't be absurd."

Lily nuzzled against him, kissed his neck, the bones in shoulders. "I love you," she said.

Her words struck him someplace deep. They were like an incantation: nonsense alone, but when you put them together, they became magic.

"I love you too," he whispered, hardly believing he'd been granted permission to say them.

Lily reached over and took his hand and pulled his arm across his body. It took him a moment to realize this was the arm with the Dark Mark, but when he tried to flinch back, she stopped him.

"I want to see," she said.

"You didn't care about seeing earlier."

"I had other things on my mind earlier." Lily kissed him. "I wasn't concerned with your arm."

Severus's face warmed. His arm, pale and glowing in the darkness, lay across the blanket. The Mark, the skull and serpent, wound its way from his wrist to his elbow.

"Does it hurt?" Lily asked.

"Not right now."

She looked at him.

"It does when he calls me."

Lily's trailed her fingers down his bicep and stopped in the crook of his elbow. The skin of his forearm was electrified; God, he wanted her to touch him, wanted her to trace the snake's path down to his wrist.

"Don't," he said.

"Why not?"

He lifted her hand away and draped it on his chest. "It connects me to the Dark Lord," he said. "I don't know - I suspect if you touched it directly, that it might be dangerous for you."

Lily didn't say anything, but she didn't pull away from him either. Instead, she lay her hand over his heart and lay her head on his shoulder. She was asleep not long after that, her breaths long and even, and he held her tight and thought about the future. He thought about how the world would be if the Dark Lord won. And then he wondered if there was a way to preserve the present, to shrink it down and put it under glass, like a toy that spun with snow whenever you lifted it off the shelf.


	18. Snape

The next morning Severus found Lily rifling through his potions shelves.

"What the hell are you doing?" he asked, voice blurred with sleep.

She glanced at him over her shoulder. She was wearing one of his robes, he noticed, her feet bare beneath the hem. The room was warmer than it had any right to be.

"Looking for moonflower seeds," she said.

"Why?" Severus shuffled into the study. "It must be a Christmas miracle: Lily Evans has decided to take up Potion-making."

She pulled a jar of valerian powder off the shelf, pulled off the lid, sniffed it.

"Hopefully the Christmas miracle will extend to protecting my belongings once your potion explodes all over the room."

"I have never exploded a potion, thank you very much." Lily set the powder on the desk and then drummed her fingers against the shelf. "Oh, here're the moonflower seeds! You  _hid_ them from me."

"I should hide all of my stock from you."

"Oh, will you quit it? Just because I'm not a  _genius_ at potion-making like you are doesn't mean I'm completely inept."

"No," said Severus. "Not completely."

Lily gazed at him with hooded, mischevious eyes as she pulled a cauldron off the top of the shelf and set it to heating on the desk. Then she added the moonflower seeds and the valerian powder and a sprinkle of fluxweed and stirred. The smoke was thin and smelled sharply medicinal, like eucalyptus.

Severus didn't recognize any of it. Not that particular combination of ingredients, not that particular order of steps. And although the smoke seemed  _vaguely_ familiar, like something he might have read about in a book, he couldn't quite identify it.

"Seriously," he said. "What are you doing?"

Lily set down her wand and sniffed the potion. Then she looked up at him and crossed her arms. "Do you want to have a baby with me?"

All the blood drained out of Severus's face.

"That's what I thought," said Lily, although she was smiling. "This potion will  _prevent_ that from happening."

Severus leaned one hand against the desk, trying to settle down the pounding of his heart. "There's a  _war_ going on _,_ " he said. "That's why I wouldn't -"

Lily laughed. "I know. I was just fucking with you."

Severus slumped down in his chair and watched the smoke curl and twist up toward the ceiling. "Where'd you get the instructions?" he asked. "I don't think any of my books deal with that particular - branch of magic."

Lily measured out a thimble of potion and knocked it back. "I memorized it during my fourth year. All the girls did."

"Really?"

"Yeah, don't you remember? When they split us up and explained to us how sex works? Every though everybody already knew." Lily tilted her head toward the potion. "Well, they made all the girls memorize that,  _and_ they put a charm on us so we wouldn't forget it. You can buy it at an apothecary shop, but it's, you know, Christmas." She gathered up an armful of empty vials and lined them up on the table, then used her wand to divy up the potion into each one. It was pale green, like the walls of St. Mungo's.

"You made a lot," Severus said.

"I know. I doubled the ingredients." Lily looked at him. "I wanted to make sure I had - plenty."

Severus blushed. Lily laughed and slid into his lap, and for the next few moments they kissed. The potion was still on Lily's lips, and it stung a little, like mint. Severus didn't mind.

"Do you really have to go to your mum's?" he asked into the side of her neck.

"Of course I do." She leaned back and brushed his hair out of his face - it was already greasy again. Severus hated his hair. "But I don't need to leave for another couple of hours."

Severus thought about the pregnancy potion lined up in jars on his desk.

"We should find a way to pass the time," he said.

Lily kissed him, long and sure, and then she stood up and pulled his robe away from her shoulders, and let it drop to the floor.

Underneath, she wore nothing.


	19. Lily

The next week passed quickly, more quickly, it seemed, than the last year and a half. Lily went to her mother's house and all of Petunia's sniping bounced off her. For the first time in months she cleaned out her flat, dusting the paintings and sweeping the floors. It was no longer difficult to smile at customers in the robemaker's shop, and she even found herself more tolerant of James and Sirius when she met with them a few days before the new year to practice Dim magic.

"You're getting better," James said as the mannequin flared bright green. She'd just shot a bolt of electricity into its chest: not enough to  _kill_ a person, Sirius had said, but enough to knock them out for a few seconds.

"Better," Sirius said. "But not perfect."

Lily ignored him and fired off another round of the lightning curse. Dim magic was more difficult than Dark, she'd discovered, although just as draining. And at least with Dim magic she didn't have to worry about giving up any of her memories of Sev: lying entangled with him beneath his old, worn sheets, kissing him in the snow of his front yard, running her fingers over his bare skin. Waiting for the ring of fire to appear around her heart that meant it was safe for her to come to his house.

She saw him every day she could, which was not every day, and that was the only sadness in her life.

She didn't get to see him on New Years Eve. There was Sirius' party to attend - she didn't want to go, particularly, but she was still a member of the Order, she still wanted to destroy Voldemort because it was the right thing to do, because Voldemort would destroy her first if given the chance, all because of her parents, all because the blood in her veins, red and thick and hot as anyone else's, wasn't  _clean_ enough. Wasn't  _pure_. And the Order was the only group fighting him. So she figured going to their parties was the least she could do.

Lily really did believe in her cause, the cause of the Order, but some nights - the nights when she couldn't go to Sev's house - she lay awake and worried. Not about Voldemort or about the war, but about Sev, and what would become of him if the Order found their victory.  _If only he would defect_ , she thought, not because the Order needed him to win - Albus could find other spies, she was certain of that, spies she did not love with all her heart - but because in the aftermath Sev would be sent to Azkaban for war crimes. She was also certain of this.

On truly dark nights, her thoughts wondered even further, and she would ask herself what he had done, to rise so quickly in Voldemort's ranks. He had to have done something. Murdered or tortured or both. On those nights, she cast Lumos against her heart because it was the only way she could fall asleep, her own body glowing like a night light.

Lily readied herself for Sirius' New Years Eve party the way she used to ready herself every morning those last few years at Hogwarts, when everyone in the school but Sev had Expectations. She styled and teased her hair, she shrouded her eyes with kohl and mascara and dark, shimmery powders. She wore a short blue Muggle dress underneath a grey men's coat - the Order didn't care about robes and other magical affectations, she'd give them that. A pair of black boots and stocking to protect her legs from the cold. Her old Gryffindor scarf even though it didn't match. Expectations.

Sirius lived in a big flat in London, and Lily used the public floo station in Everthorne Alley to come sliding into his living room in a shower of sparks and ash and floo powder. Nobody noticed her at first - she'd decided to come about an hour or so after the party was scheduled to start, and so everyone was already dancing and drinking in the flat's bright golden light. Then she head a voice shouting her name, and when she craned her neck around she saw Alice Longbottom waving frantically at her from beside a table filled with hors d'oeuvres and jewel-toned bottles of liquor and wine.

"Lily, I haven't seen you in so  _long_." Alice wrapped her arms around Lily's shoulders; she smiled faintly of butterbeer. "We  _missed_ you at Christmas."

"I was at my sister's," Lily said.

"I heard." Alice smiled brightly. "Would you like something to drink?" She gestured toward the table: Muggle and magical drinks both were set out in clusters, and when Lily said, "I'll take a whiskey and tonic, I guess," a glass tumbler filled with ice appeared on the table, and the whiskey and tonic bottles lifted and poured her drink for her. It was the best whiskey and tonic she had ever tasted.

It figured that Sirius would have a house elf or two hidden away, tucked out of sight. Lily was fairly sure not everyone in the Order was fighting for equality.

Alice drifted off to find her husband, and Lily circled around the perimeter of the room, watching the party but not participating. Sirius and James were at its center, Peter off in the periphery, Remus nowhere to be seen. James had his arm draped over Joanie's shoulders, and they were both laughing at something Sirius had said. Lily sipped her drink. The ice hadn't melted at all; it was as strong and cold as the moment it was poured.

An explosion of yellow fire erupted out of the middle of the room.

Lily slammed up against the wall, spilling her drink on the floor.  _Death Eaters_ , she thought. Then:  _Sev - they found out_  -

Then she heard laughter.

Lily straightened up and smoothed her dress down over her hips. Sirius and James and Peter were clinging to each other as they laughed, tears sparkling at their eyes. The ceiling was scorched, and Lily could smell the faint whiff of tangerines - it was fucking firebomb powder, from Zonko's. God, she hated all of them.

The rest of the guests started tittering, and someone clapped and called out Sirius's name, which Sirius responded to by flipping the bird and laughing harder. A trio of girls giggled and rushed forward to help pull Sirius to his feet. Not one of them looked like old enough to have graduated Hogwarts yet.

Lily fumbled around in her purse for her pack of cigarettes. Then she wove through the party guests, nodding hello and smiling, until she found the glass doors that opened up to the balcony.

The balcony, at least, was empty. Lily eased the door shut behind her and leaned against the railing as she lit her cigarette. London was veined with rivers of Muggle lights, and the air was cold and damp and smelled faintly of metal. Music trickled in from the flat, faint and far-away, and every now and then she heard laughter.

Lily smoked her cigarette down to the filter and lit another one. She wished Sev was here with her - wished that they could have come crashing through the fireplace together, and that he would stand with his arm draped over her shoulders the way James did with Joanie. She wondered what he would have said after that explosion of firebomb powder. He wouldn't have laughed like everyone else, of course, and he probably would have called James and Sirius dunderheaded prats, whispering it in Lily's ear, and she would've covered her mouth as she laughed whiled everyone else looked on and wondered what their secret was.

The balcony door swung open.

Lily near dropped her cigarette over the railing. She turned to look over her shoulder. It was Remus. He wore that same ratty corduroy jacket, the same blue scarf. He smiled at her.

"Aren't you cold?" he asked.

"Well, it got a little  _warm_  inside."

Remus laughed. "You shouldn't let them bother you."

"They're idiots." She dragged hard on her cigarette and remembered that they were also his friends. "I'm sorry, I know you - "

"I understand why you think they're idiots," Remus said. He stood beside her at the railing, leaning against it a little, squinting into the wind. Lily let the cigarette smolder between her fingers. "I don't think they've quite - grown up yet."

"There's a war going on," Lily said. "Maybe they should get to it."

"It's just their way of dealing with the war," Remus said, and he didn't look at her when he spoke. "Laughter, you know. Joking around. We all have to do something."

Lily looked down at the red ember floating in the dark. She thought about lying in Sev's arms.

"I suppose that's true," she said.

"The reason you don't like them," he said, glancing over at her. "It's because of Severus, isn't it? Severus Snape?"

Lily froze, cigarette hoisted up beside her head, smoke spinning out into the nighttime. She thought about her words very carefully before she spoke.

"Severus was my best friend," she said.

_Is my best friend_.

"That's what I mean." Remus paused, and when Lily looked over at him he was staring at his hands, gloved and folded on top of the banister. "They were quite cruel to him."

"A bit of understatement." An old anger flushed hot in Lily's cheeks.

Remus didn't say anything.

"When I was Head Girl," Lily said. "And James wouldn't leave me the fuck alone for five minutes, I asked him one time. Why he did it." She sucked on her cigarette. The smoke burned her throat. "Why he wouldn't just  _let him be._ And you know what he said?"

No answer. Lily glared at him. "Do you?" she asked. "Do you know what he said?"

"I can imagine," Remus said quietly.

"He said -" Lily stopped. Her hands were shaking. She knew she needed to calm down but she didn't want to. "He said, 'I do it because he exists.'"

Silence save for the faint thump of music, the faint trails of laughter.

"Hateful," Lily added, and she flicked her cigarette out into the inky night, and it fell like a shooting star toward the ground.

"Yes," Remus said.

Lily's anger dissipated in surprise. She turned to Remus. "Are you  _agreeing_ with me?"

Remus suddenly looked much older than nineteen. His face was drawn and pale, his eyes shadowed. "I am," he said. "It was hateful. I always - I should have stood up for him. I almost did, a couple of times."

"When I wasn't there?" Lily said, and it came out nastier than she intended.

"Yes." Remus''s expression had turned solemn and mournful. "I would apologize to him, if I could. When I heard that he - that he'd actually done it, joined the Death Eaters -"

Lily closed her eyes and sucked in a deep shaking breath.

"- I thought maybe I could have stopped it. Maybe he did it because of us. Because of how they - because of how  _we -_  wouldn't let up."

Lily opened her eyes and dropped her head down. Light fanned out of the flat, illuminating the toes of her boots.

"It was probably a factor," she said. "Not the only one, but a factor."

Remus nodded, although Lily thought he looked ashamed, too.

"Do you want a cigarette?" she asked.

"No thanks."

Lily toyed with the package, peeling the foil away from the wrapping, but she decided she was sick of smoking.

"I think I might've liked being friends with him," Remus said, after a long pause.

Lily didn't know what to say. In truth, she didn't even know what to think. It didn't surprise her so much, that Remus hadn't liked what James and Sirius did. And it made her sad that he'd never said anything to them. Remus' help would've made Sev angry, she knew, but for her the sadness had always eclipsed everything else, and she wondered if things might've been different if Remus had been friends with Sev, if that might really have stopped him from joining the Death Eaters. Lily used to think her friendship should have been enough, but now she understood things were never so simple.

And anyway, none of it mattered. A time-turner could only take you back so far. It could not unwind years and years of damage, and it could not turn Sev into someone else. Which is what it would do, Lily realized. And she didn't want Sev to be someone else. Because she wanted  _him_.

"Lily?" Remus said, his voice gentle. "I'm sorry, I've made you sad -"

"You didn't make me sad." Lily wrapped her arms around herself. "I miss him, but -" That, at least, wasn't a lie. She did miss him, furiously, out there in the cold. Just not in the way Remus would be thinking.

"I hope you and I could be friends, too," Remus said. "Not straight away, but - eventually."

Lily looked at him. "I think I could do that. Not with James and Sirius. But with you - I think I could."  _Eventually._

Remus smiled, and Lily didn't want to stand out in the cold anymore. She didn't want to have conversations about her lover as if he were lost in the dark. "Let's go back into the party," she said, and when she pulled the doors open, the warmth and light and music slammed into her like a curse, and she wished she could go home to him, wished she could crawl into bed beside him, without committing an act of treachery.

The world had been besieged by madness, and there was nothing that perfect sparkling Lily Evans could do about it.


	20. Lily

Three days after the New Year, Dumbledore sent his Patronus.

It appeared in her kitchen, a phoenix, clear and crisp and wreathed in white light. When she saw it, Lily dropped her teacup, which shattered into a hundred pieces.

_Lily_ , the patronus said in that weird distortion of Albus's voice, as if he were speaking through a microphone.  _Lily, you must come to Headquarters at once_.

"Why?" Her stomach twisted even though this couldn't possibly be about Sev - Albus never sent his Patronus for  _that_.

_We have intelligence about a Death Eater meeting in Lancashire. We need your help for the raid_.

"My help! A raid!" Lily shook her head. "I can't  _fight_."

_On the contrary, my dear, you are one of the few Order members with any proficiency - or indeed knowledge of - the Dim spells. And we simply don't have enough Aurors for a raid of this magnitude_.

"Magnitude," Lily said weakly.

The Patronus lifted its wing, and light filled Lily's kitchen. In the light she saw shadows that became people - Guthrie Branstone and Tessie Keddle and Thelma Olney, all of them Aurors, all of them Order members.

_They've been missing for the last two days_ , the Patronus said _. This isn't just a raid, it's a rescue mission_.

"I can't fight," Lily said.

_You have to_.

With that, the Patronus faded, leaving little sparkles on the air in its wake. Lily grabbed her cigarettes off the table and smoked one down to the filter. She thought about the curses Sev had described to her, the ones the Death Eaters used to murder and torture. She wondered if any of them had been cast on the three missing Aurors. God, she hoped not.

By the time Lily finished her cigarette, the sparkles had disappeared, and Lily knew she had to go.

She dressed in jeans and an old worn-out jumper and some comfortable, sensible boots that didn't pinch her feet. She saw no point in attempting to fight in robes and a witch's hat. Then she shoved her wand and her cigarettes into her pocket, and she Apparated to Headquarters.

Frank Longbottom answered the door, looking grim. Lily stepped inside. The air crackled with tension, and about three dozen faces turned toward her. James frowned when he saw her. So did Sirius.

"You?" Sirius said. "What are you doing here?"

"Dumbledore called me," she snapped. "I'm to fight, same as you."

Sirius sighed, and Lily's fingers curled in irritation. Remus put his hand on Sirius's shoulder, whispered something to him, and Sirius turned away, taking James with him.

"I'm glad to have you fighting with us," Remus said to her.

Lily nodded, but in truth she didn't care one way about Sirius - or anyone else - not thinking she was fit to fight _._ She  _wasn't_ fit to fight. She couldn't even kill a  _tree_ , for fuck's sake. Fear crept like poison through her veins, immobilizing her, tightening her breath, and what she wanted more than anything in the world was to turn and walk right out the way she came and then Apparate to someplace far, far away.

But she didn't.

Leopold Crook, one of the head Aurors, stepped into the room and began to speak. They were Apparating to Dankworth Manor. The Aurors were to focus on rescue, the others were to focus on holding off the Death Eaters. After rescue there was going to be some attempt to capture a handful of the enemy.

There was a very good chance that He Who Must Not Be Named would be present.

Lily's whole body turned to ice, and she swallowed back bile, and she wished she could be laughing in the snow with Sev -

Sev.

What if Sev was there?

Lily made a low whimpering noise in the back of her throat, but no one seemed to notice.

_He doesn't fight anymore_ , she told herself.  _That's what's he told me - he said he does research now, not fighting -_

"We'll Apparate in pairs, just outside the manor's gates," Crook was saying _._ "Once you're inside, immobilize as many Death Eaters as possible. We want to take them into custody, not kill them."

_I can do that. I don't have to kill them. I can do that._

"Custody where?" shouted Sirius. "We don't have Azkaban anymore."

Crook fixed him with a steely glare. "I'm not at liberty to discuss that with you, Black, but suffice to say we will not be turning them back over to You Know Who once we've left Dankworth Manor."

_I won't let them take Sev. He won't be there. But if he is, I won't let them take him. I won't. I won't._

Remus's hand was at her elbow. "Lily," he whispered. "Let's Apparate together."

Lily nodded dumbly, her vision blurred with tears or terror or panic or heartbreak. She didn't know. She couldn't tell any of it apart anymore.

"Do you remember the blindness curse?" Remus said. "Caecus Totalus? The immoblization curse? I know you can do this."

Lily thought about the forest full of evergreen trees, the ones she couldn't kill. She thought about Sev saying  _The best defense for the Dark Arts is love_. She thought about kissing him in the prismatic glow of the fairy lights on Christmas Eve. She thought about how he touched her, as if she were something precious. She thought about waking up some mornings in his bed while he was still asleep, grey light spilling across his face, his hooked nose and lank hair, those features she found beautiful.

_At least I told him I loved him before I died_ , she thought.

And then she was standing amid the icy dead grasses of some frozen moor, the windows of Dankworth Manor glowing green in the bruised afternoon twilight.

She didn't even remember Apparating, but when she looked down she was clutching Remus's arm, and she realized he must have done it for her.

"You'll be fine," Remus said.

Lily pulled out her wand.

She saw one or two of the others as they crept over the frozen grass, half hidden by shadows and magic, but otherwise the moor was empty and still. Not even the wind held its breath.

Then the screams started.

Lily and Remus both froze. The screams came from the manor, distant and terrible.

"Lily," Remus whispered. "Be brave."

_I don't want to be brave_.

But she moved forward anyway, heart hammering in her chest. The manor loomed closer and closer, and soon she was creeping through the broken stone pathways of an old and long-neglected garden.

A voice cried out; magic flared and sputtered. Lily managed not to fling herself to the ground. But then silence settled thick and deep over the garden, and a group of Aurors slid forward through the shadows. There was a lump on the ground, Lily saw, a lump in Death Eater's robes.  _Please don't be Sev please don't be Sev_.

It took every once of willpower not to knock the mask aside, just to see.

"This way," someone whispered - not Remus, somehow she'd gotten separated from him, and she was pressed in tight with a pair of Aurors and Kirsten Mitchell, an Order member only a few years older than Lily. Her face was stony and determined. She did not look like frightened.

_I don't want to be brave but I don't want to be scared, either._

One of the Aurors nudged open the big carved-wooden doors. The screaming started up again and everyone froze in place. It was closer now, coming from somewhere in those dim, green-lit rooms, coming in waves, like the ocean, and Lily wished it would stop, wished she would never have to hear screaming again -

It stopped.

The silence worked its way under Lily's skin.

"In _,_ "hissed a voice. "Now." Lily was shoved from behind, into the manor. When she passed through the doorway the wards sparked her skin in a way that reminded her of stepping into Sev's house.

The manor walls hummed.

Aurors fanned out, Lily following their trajectory as if she were being dragged on a fishing line. Her heart thudded heavily in her chest. Her grip on her wand was slippery with clammy sweat and so tight that her fingers ached. Her footsteps seemed to reverberate with each step, but after a second or two she realized, no, it was the manor, it was shaking, the whole thing was shaking -

Death Eaters poured into the foyer.

Lily screamed and fired off the blindness curse without thinking; she didn't see where it struck. Then she panicked: behind one of those pale cruel masks could be Sev, and what if she hit him, what if she hurt him? She couldn't fire on any of them, not without knowing -

A curse arced toward her, a flare of a shimmery orange light, and Lily flung out her wand and shouted, " _Mala Tonare!"_ out of instinct. The spell absorbed the curse with enough force that Lily stumbled backwards, and it became another burst of Dark magic in a room thick with Darkness, that strange sucking emptiness that made Lily's lung ache for air.

Someone else attacked her, a different curse this time, green and snapping like a snake; this time, Lily saw her attacker, and after she blocked the curse she knocked him back with the Dim spell for immobilization, pushing it out of her wand as he tried to counteract with Dark magic: for a few paralyzing seconds Lily thought he would win.

But then he crumpled to the ground, wand rolling away into the chaos.

_It wasn't Sev_ , she thought as she raced forward, throwing up shields around herself.  _Sev would never fire on me, he would never do anything that might hurt me_.

Lily had never felt such terror as she did in that room, but she did not question this about Sev. Not once.

Another attack, this one stronger than the other, though Lily was able to block him with Sev's Mala Tonare spell. This one hissed when she used it, and laughed, and said, "What do you think you're doing, you filthy little creature? You think you know Darkness?"

Lily used the moment to gather herself and cast a Dark curse for pain, another of Sev's lessons. Her attacker fell to the ground screaming, and she left him, adrenaline pushing through her body, her thoughts frozen. She knew, vaguely, that someone had assigned some task to her before she came into the manor, but now that she was here all she knew was that she needed to live long enough to see Sev again, and her mum, and even Petunia and her awful obnoxious husband, and Remus and Albus and her father's grave. And so she cycled through the same steps every time some Death Eater flung Dark magic at her: block, concentrate, attack.

And it worked.

It fucking worked.

Lily darted into a narrow black hallway, out of the fighting. She sucked in deep, painful breaths: all that Dark magic in the air made her cold and desperate, and it dredged up old memories of childhood cruelties, James and Sirius tormenting Sev to the point that he snapped and snarled at her if she tried to help, Petunia calling her a freak and a monster, her father dying.

She slipped into hopelessness. Into despair.

Lily cast Lumos on her heart.

The glow illuminated the hallway enough for her see, and the joy neutralized her despair but did not overtake it, and so Lily felt flat and empty, like a shell, but at least she could think straight.

Whispers drifted down the hall.

Lily gravitated toward them, her wand out, her steps careful and silent.

Screaming.

Lily jolted, but this time she didn't freeze in place.  _A rescue mission, Albus said this was a rescue mission_. The screaming grew louder and louder, and layered beneath it she could hear laughter.

The screaming died away; the laughter carried on.

"You want it to stop?" said a voice, soft and chilling as the wind. "I'm afraid I can't do that. I would if I could, but - the matter's out of my hands."

The voice laughed, and someone else whimpered and keened.

"Please," came a second voice, this one taut as a wire. "Please. You could just kill me -"

"I've already killed you. I'm afraid it just takes some time to  _work_."

The other killing curses. The ones that were not acts of mercy.  _All of them irreversible_.

"Please kill me," the second voice said. "Please. Please."

"Oh, do stop talking."

More screaming. More laughter. Lily's stomach lurched and her wand trembled in her hand.

_A rescue mission._

_An act of mercy._

_Lily, be brave._

_Be brave._

Lily slid forward, her feet whisper-soft against the manor's cold wooden marbles floors. The screaming stopped, abruptly, and the chilly voice said, "There, there, that's better."

A door swung open into the hallway.

Lily nearly screamed, but she slammed up against the wall and covered her mouth with her hand. Light poured out of the open doorway, drowning out her own soft glow, and a hooded figure stepped out and strode toward the end of the hall, away from Lily.

From inside the room, someone moaned.

Lily took a deep breath. Then she darted into the room, wand out. It was too bright after the darkness of the hallway, and for a few terrifying seconds she blinked and squinted, and then things came into focus: the walls hung with strange moving tapestries, the man that lay sprawled on a four-poster bed, his skin flaking off like ash.

"Please," the man said.  _"Please_ ". Whenever he spoke grey-red powder puffed up into the air. Lily's stomach lurched. She gasped.

The man turned toward her. His eyes were bigger than they should be, and Lily realized it was because the skin around them had flaked away, and she could see the white of bone sticking out in his cheeks and along his collar.

"A Muggle?" the man said. "You're beautiful. You look as if you're glowing -"

Lily choked back her nausea. She shook her head. "I didn't want to wear robes." It sounded so stupid. "Let me help you, I'm with the Order."

"You can't," the man said. "You should go, before he - before he comes back." Then the man screamed, and Lily almost screamed with him. A strip of skin peeled away from his chest and floated up to the ceiling. The muscle and blood underneath was dry as dust.

Even with Sev's potion activated, tears welled in Lily's eyes. "I can help you," she said. "Please. I know - I learned - I learned how."

The man stopped screaming and gasped in long choking breaths. The ash was thick in Lily's nose and mouth; she could feel it settling over her hair, her jumper.

"Can't help me," he said. "The spell's irreversible."

"I know."

He looked at her then, his horrific eyes imploring. "You would do that?"

_Be brave, Lily Evans._

She lifted her wand. Pointed it as his heart.

"Please," the man said. "Please. Before he comes back."

" _Avada Kadavra_ ," Lily said.

The light poured out of her wand, green and gentle and bright, and she felt the man's life draw back like the tide, and her whole body trembled and shook. When the green light faded, the man's eyes were empty.

Lily stumbled backwards, dazed.

"Why in  _fuck_ did you do that?"

It was the soft chilling voice. Lily almost threw up.

"Who the fuck are you? Why are you dressed like that?"

She whirled around, holding her wand out. For a wild second she thought the man in the hood was You-Know-Who, and she was shocked by how normal he looked, as young and clean-cut as James Potter. But then his eyes squinted and he said, "Lily Evans?"

And she remembered him. He'd been in Gryffindor, he'd played Quidditch, he was four years older than her. She didn't know his name.

Why did she care if she knew his name?

"You'll be a long time dying, mudblood," he said.

Lily cast the Avada Kedavra without hesitation. She flicked her hand back and launched the green light at his torso, and he slumped against the floor and lay there unmoving.

The room tilted, and this time Lily did throw up, falling to her knees and retching until there was nothing left. Then she crawled across the floor and leaned up against the wall, away from the tapestry, away from the bed and the bodies. She heard fighting off in the distance, the crash and crackle of curses and blocks, and the screams of Death Eaters and Aurors alike.

She did not know how long she sat there, Sev's light beating back her emotions. It seemed like hours and it seemed like days.

And then the room flooded with white light, the white light of a Patronus, and it was too much, and Lily fell down into darkness.


	21. Snape

Severus fled the battle when the Order unleashed their Patronuses, when they ringed around Dankworth Manor and cast those great shields of white light. He didn't want to. He swore he had seen a flash of red hair in the crush of the melee, and the thought of her somewhere in the manor filled him with a fury he had only barely managed to Occlude away.

He hadn't been a part of the battle, not really, and so there had been no way for him to protect her somehow, no way to send her off to one of the secret locked rooms of the manor. No, he had to stand by the Dark Lord's side and  _watch_ , because he was one of the Inner Circle, and the Inner Circle did not fight.

They could be treated as shields, of course, standing between the Dark Lord and destruction, but they did not  _fight._

When the Opposition blasted the manor with the strength of their Patronuses, and the Death Eaters all scattered like insects, the Dark Lord grabbed Severus's arm and hissed, "I won't have you dead."

And he looked hard in Severus's eyes and the shields knitted themselves up so quickly that for a moment Severus almost forgot Lily himself.

"Go," the Dark Lord said. " _Now_."

And Severus did as he was told, because he could not defy the Dark Lord in the moment of retreat. He intended to Apparate home to Spinners End, but when the ink cleared he was standing on an unfamiliar street, the air still and cold, icicles hanging like daggers from the street lamps.

Severus exhaled a long white breath and let the shields unwind. Rage gripped him, and terror, and hopelessness. He needed to track her, needed to see if she was at least _alive_. And he needed to figure out why the fuck he had Apparated here instead of his front yard.

It was late enough and cold enough that no one was out, but the street looked more Muggle than magical. Severus slid off his Death Eater mask and tucked it inside his robes, then crept along the icy sidewalk looking for an alley or a shadowy corner or  _something_.

And then he realized he had been to this street before.

It was the street where Lily lived - he recognized the old brick building he'd gone to when he came to heal her arm. It looked different in the dark, and covered with snow and ice, that's why he hadn't noticed right away. His thoughts of her must have tainted his Apparation.

He didn't know which window belonged to her flat, but it didn't matter, because all the windows in the building were dark.

Severus let himself into the building with a tap of the wand to the front door's Muggle lock, then wound quickly up the stairwell to her flat. He banged on the door. No answer.

For a moment, Severus didn't know what to do. Should he sit in the hallway for her to wake up - or come home, if that was the case? (He hoped it wasn't.) What if she was dead? He couldn't risk casting the tracking spell out in the open, not even in an empty Muggle hallway. He could Apparate back to Spinners End, but some vulnerable part of him not Occluded into nothingness didn't want to leave.

Severus hunched over her door, keeping his wand half-hidden in the sleeve of his robe. If anybody came out he could Confund them, but he would just as soon not deal with the hassle.

She had a charm on her door, a small one, and another slightly stronger ward. None of it Dark, of course, and Severus was able to break them both easily enough - although he did cast a quick repair spell once he was inside. He felt vaguely uneasy about breaking into her flat, but the moment he was through the doorway, and he could smell  _her_ on the air, all he wanted was to gather her up in his arms and tell her that she was safe.

_If she's safe._

Severus slipped into the bedroom, but it was empty, the bedsheets smooth and unrumpled. Panic flooded through him, and that rage again, blinding and hot as the sun. He built up his shields just so he could concentrate.

He cast the Dark Lord's tracking spell over her bed, the light filling her room with eerie, crawling shadows. It took him about five minutes - five minutes during which his Occlumency built mazes inside his head, locking everything way - but eventually he found her. In Taiwan.

He sighed and slumped back on her bed, the spell still glowing above him.  _She's alive_. And in a safe house somewhere, too - he checked the spell again, and it had her on the American Atlantic coast this time.

Hopefully she wasn't hurt. Even though he knew damn well that Death Eaters did not merely  _hurt_. Which meant she was probably all right.

Probably.

He left the spell hanging in the air like a curtain of light and curled up on top of her bed, pressing his face into her pillow, which smelled like her hair, which smelled like her skin. He didn't take down his shields. He knew the sort of pain that was lurking inside of him: pain like a knife sawing out your heart, pain like watching someone die. And so he kept himself empty. He didn't think about Lily, he didn't think about the Dark Lord, he didn't think about anything at all.


	22. Lily

Lily opened her eyes.

_I killed someone,_  she thought.  _I killed two someones_.

She sat up, kicking off the thin blanket that someone had tossed over her legs. She still wore the same clothes she had in the battle, and her skin was sticky with dried sweat, her mouth cottony and sick-tasting.

"You're awake!"

It was a man's voice.  _Sev_ , she thought, but of course it wasn't Sev, because she was surrounded by Order members, healers mostly, bustling back and forth between beds - she was in a hospital? No, no, they wouldn't have gone to St. Mungo's, it was too open, it wasn't safe.

"How do you feel? Alice found you passed out -"

There was a hand on her shoulder. Remus. Lily blinked at him.

"Could I have some water?" she asked.

"Of course."

He slid away from the bed. The room was quieter than she would have expected, considering the number of people stretched out in its beds. Every now and then someone would moan, and there was the faint susurration of voices, but otherwise nothing.

Remus reappeared with a glass of water. Lily gulped it down. Her head was starting to clear, but still the last thing she remembered was the Patronus light, flooding into the room, wiping her clean.

Remus Aguamenti'd more water into her glass.

"Thanks," she said. Then: "What happened? Did we - did we win?"

"They took close to twenty Death Eaters into custody."

Lily's stomach twisted up, and she clenched her hands tight around the water glass so Remus wouldn't see them shaking.

"He wasn't one of them," Remus whispered, leaning in close to her. "I checked for you."

Lily closed her eyes. "He was my best friend," she said, because she couldn't say,  _I love him_.

"I know." Remus held out his wand. "Do you want more water?"

LIly nodded and handed him the glass. When she did, she noticed for the first time the pearly opalescence still clinging to her skin. She hadn't deactivated Sev's spell. Remus didn't say anything about it, though, and Lily wondered would happen if she took it off, if she would completely break down. Her despair felt barely neutralized as it was.

_I killed two people_.

A healer came over to Lily's bed and cast a diagnostic spell without saying anything to either Lily or Remus. She pursed her lips as the spell spun through all the parts of Lily's body.

"You aren't hurt," she said.

"Alice Longbottom found her passed out - Violet, she had been with Guthrie Branstone, who was - the Death Eaters had - " Remus stopped, his voice strangled. He took a deep breath and rubbed his head. "She was in enormous danger."

"I understand," Violet said impatiently. "But she isn't  _hurt_ , and we have people who are. I've never  _seen_ some of these curses. I didn't know such evil existed in the world."

Lily felt her face go pale.

"And I'm afraid I can't have you taking up the bed space. I'm sorry, dear," Violet added, her voice turning slightly more understanding. "But we just can't spare it right now."

"I really don't think - " Remus said.

Violet fixed him with a steely, maternal glare.

"I'm fine," Lily said. "She's right, I'm not hurt and I'm - I'm fine."

That wasn't entirely true, but she didn't want to talk about it with Remus. She wanted  _Sev_. She wanted to say his name out loud, there in that Order safe house, as if his name could bring him to her side.

"Why don't we go downstairs and have some tea," Remus said. "You need to rest. Even if they can't spare a bed."

Lily nodded without thinking, then followed him out into the hallway, away from the moans of the cursed and dying Aurors. As they wound down the stairs, Lily's vision tinted green; she wobbled and leaned up against the wall. Remus looked at her in alarm.

"Just dizzy," Lily said.

"Is it the spell that's on you?" Remus asked. "It's a protection spell, right? You don't need it here -"

"I'm not taking it off!" Lily wrenched away from him and stumbled down the rest of the stairs. She found she didn't think about the two people she killed as much as she might have expected. She couldn't see their faces. She only knew one name -  _Guthrie Branstone_. But he had asked for it, hadn't he? He wanted it? He was already dead before she found him.

"I want to go home," Lily said.

Remus turned toward her. "I'm don't think you should be alone right now."

Lily shook her head. "I can't - I can't deal with all this. I want to go home."

Remus looked at her gently. She knew he was calculating some way to make her stay in the safe house without upsetting her.

"My flat has wards," she said.

"Lily -"

"I want to lie down," Lily said. "And I can't do that here."

Lines appeared in Remus's brow. "Well, you shouldn't go alone -"

"I want to." Lily sighed. "I'll send my Patronus, okay? Every hour?"

Remus stared at her for a few moments. Then he nodded. Lily deflated with relief: he had only been trying to help her, she knew that, but she still couldn't bear the thought of another second in the safe house.

_Sev, I want Sev_.

"Thank you," she said. "I appreciate it, I do, I just -" She closed her eyes and saw the confusion on the Death Eater's face in the second before she cursed him. "Tonight was difficult. I don't think I can - I mean, I know - I can't fight."

"You survived."

"Barely," Lily said.

Remus frowned. Something flickered across his features, and Lily realized then that he understood, even as she knew she could never, ever tell him what she had done.

"Thank you," she said again, wrapping her arms loosely around his shoulders in a hug.

"Tell me if you need anything," Remus said.

Lily nodded. Then she walked out of the front door of the safe house and conjured up the last of her strength so she could Apparate home.

She dropped off in her usual spot, the narrow little alley behind her building where someone had stashed spare rubbish bins and someone else had left out bowls of cat food. The cold and darkness and silence washed over her, solace after the confinement of the safe house. Her glow created thin shadows against the wall of her building.

Lily didn't dare deactivate the potion. The numbness was unsettling and disconcerting, but she was afraid of what would become of her if she let herself face the consequences of her actions without interference. So she ducked her head and raced into the building and up the stairs, praying that no one would see her.

Letting herself into the flat was a relief. She locked the door, checked the wards, and dropped her wand on the table - she didn't want to think about the things that wand had done. She pulled off her boots and shuffled into her bedroom, light streaking out behind her.

A shadow appeared in her doorway. Dark robes and a pale face.

Lily screamed.

"Lily!"

"Sev?"

Lily stepped backwards, her heart pounding. Sev stepped forward, into the thin electric light spilling in through the windows. When she saw him, saw that it was him for certain, she rushed forward and flung her arms around his neck and buried her face into his shoulders. She could smell the residue of curses on him, that scent like smoke and electricity and rainstorms and blood.

Lily did not know such magic existed in the world, magic that would bring him to her when she needed him most, when she needed the reminder that she was capable of love.

"You're safe," he said, voice raspy and dark. "You're safe."

Lily balled her fists up in his robes - they weren't his normal robes, the fabric was different, slick like oil and cool to the touch.

She knew what they were.

"You were there," she said.

He pulled her closer, his face pressed into her hair, his breath warm and ragged against her scalp.

"I was so afraid I was going to hurt you," she said. "Everyone was masked - and firing on me -"

"I would never fire on you."

"I know, that's how I was able to tell." She pulled away from him and looked up at him. His eyes glittered and his mouth was set into a hard straight line and she realized he was angry.

"Why were you there at all?" he asked.

"I had to fight." Lily chewed on her lip. "Albus asked me. They were trying to rescue some Aurors who had been captured -"

"Why the  _fuck_  did Dumbledore send you?" His fingers dug into her back; she could feel his heart racing against her chest. "You aren't an Auror. Let them rescue themselves."

"They needed our help," Lily said weakly, but she didn't want to argue with him because she  _agreed_ with him. She knew she shouldn't have gone, and yet - she had taken an oath, and they had to fight if they didn't want You Know Who to win.

"You activated the potion," Sev said, the anger still lingering in his voice, apparent enough that Lily knew he hadn't Occluded his rage away.

"I had to," Lily said. And she thought about the two men she had killed, one slumped on the floor and the other stretched across a bed. "Sev, I did something terrible."

She could tell  _him_ , couldn't she? She had always told him everything, back when they were in school, because he wouldn't judge her. He might mock her, but he wouldn't _judge_  her, the way Albus and Remus and all the rest of them would if they knew -

"Lily," he said. His hands pressed against her face. The anger in his voice was replaced with urgency. "Lily, what happened?"

She opened her mouth, but she couldn't speak. Tears limned at her lashline. Emotion cracked around the edges of that shield of light. Despair, guilt, grief - she could feel them there, crouching, waiting.

"Lily," Sev said, and something in his voice broke.

"I cast it - the killing curse," Lily said. The words turned to ash in her mouth. "Twice."

Sev pulled her tight against his body and did not let go.

"It worked," she added lamely.

"Death Eaters?"

"One of them." That was the easiest of the two for her to think of, that Gryffindor in his black robes.  _You'll be a long time dying, mudblood_.

"One? Who was the -"

Tears streaked down her face, staining Sev's robe. "He asked me to," she said. "He was tearing apart and he  _asked_ me to and he kept screaming and I remembered what you said and I couldn't think straight -"

Sev held her as tightly as ever.

"He was already  _dead_ , that's what the Death Eater told him. He was in  _pain_."

"Lily." Sev's voice cut through her misery, sharp as a sword. "You did him a kindness."

Lily wept against Sev's chest. She couldn't feel the potion anymore. And her hands weren't glowing. Maybe her sorrow was so strong it had destroyed all hope of happiness.

"I broke your potion," she said.

"You didn't break it. It just ran down. I didn't expect -" His arms tightened against her back. "Come on."

And then he led her, with small, attentive steps, into her bedroom. The light in there was strange, eerie and pale, and some spell hovered near her wall, her name written out with magic. Sev didn't say anything about it; she didn't ask.

He slipped her jumper over her head and took off her jeans and her shoes and socks, moving slowly, his touch gentle and chaste. He Accio'd a night gown to his side and dressed her in it, smoothing the fabric down along her sides. He didn't say a word the entire time, and Lily watched him in his Death Eater's robes, her sadness rolling over her like waves. His touch was the only thing that cut through it.

"Lie down," he whispered, and she did, and he pulled the blankets up to her shoulders.

"Lie with me," she said.

He gave her a long and inscrutable look.

"Please," she said. She wanted to feel his body against hers. It was the only thing that didn't feel like sorrow.

For a long time he didn't move. Finally, he pulled his Death Eater's robes away. He wore a simple grey shift underneath, and he didn't take that off. Lily wouldn't have minded if he had.

He crawled into bed beside her, put his hands on her waist.

"I feel like I'm dying," Lily said.

"You aren't." His words formed warm spots on the back of her neck.

Lily stared at the opposite wall, the cracks and stains there all illuminated by the light of his spell.

"Sev?" she asked. "Have you ever killed someone?"

He didn't pull away from her, as she half-expected. But he didn't answer, either.

"I won't - won't say anything - I just want to know - "

"Why?" A whisper so soft and so low that it was almost inaudible.

"Because." Her voice cracked, and tears came out.

Sev pulled her close. She rolled over to face him, to press herself into the solidity of his body. "Have you?" she asked, tears choking out her words.

"Yes."

She knew there was a time when that answer would have shocked her, disgusted her, even though she'd already suspected it for a year and a half. But that was from a time before Lily Evans walked through the doors of Dankworth Manor and cast herself into darkness.

"Did it - did it hurt afterwards?"

"Yes."

Lily had known that answer, too.

"And then I Occluded it away from myself. Afterwards, it didn't - it stopped hurting."

"I wish I could do that."

"No, you don't."

Lily looked at him, but Occlumency had wiped his face clean.

"What did you use?" she whispered.

Sev frowned, though his eyes stayed empty and blank. "The Avada Kedavra," he said. "I also - tortured someone. For information. When he gave it, I let him go." He spoke more quickly now. "Those were the only ones I did myself. But I watched others, other Death Eaters. I still do sometimes. I don't stop them."

Lily waited for the horror to grow in her heart, but it didn't.

"I never wanted to," Sev said. "I wanted to practice Dark magic. That's all. But if you want into a club, you have to say the password."

A tear dropped into the hollow of his cheekbones, and then another, and another.

Lily had never seen Sev cry. She'd seen him angry and snarling and cruel, she'd seen him rage and hurl spells at walls, she'd seen him scream profanities until her ears burned. She always thought those things were his way of crying, those were the things he did when his emotions overwhelmed him.

Her own tears evaporated at the sight of his. She leaned forward and kissed him three times, each time tasting the salt on his skin.

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you for telling me."

"You deserve better." He said it flatly, and whether that was because of Occlumency or because of something else, Lily couldn't say.

"I don't know what I deserve," she told him, looking him hard in the eye, ignoring the sorrow that still twisted and writhed around the base of her brain. "But what I want is you."


	23. Lily

Lily spent a long time in the shower the next morning. She turned the water up to scalding and let it run over her body until her skin was pink, then she washed the ash and sweat out of her hair. She didn't get out of the shower until the hot water ran out.

Afterwards, she dressed by rote, digging her oldest and most comfortable Muggle clothes out of the closet. She ran a brush through her wet hair a few times and twisted it into a braid. A narrow strip of her hair, growing from behind her right ear, had bleached itself overnight. She could see it winding through the braid, grey with water.

Pans clattered out in the kitchenette, and Lily jumped at the sudden noise. That was enough, although only barely, to drag her away from her ghostly, anemic reflection.

Sev was hunched over the stove when she came into the main room, stirring something in one of her skillets. He glanced up at her.

"I'm making eggs," he said.

"I think you might be burning them."

"What? Fuck!" Sev yanked the skillet off the stove. "I didn't realize they cooked so fast."

The thought of food made Lily's stomach coil, but she'd never known Sev to do something as courteous as cook breakfast. She hated the thought of seeing his thoughtfulness go to waste.

Sev dumped the eggs onto a plate and sent the plate sailing over to the table, where it joined a kettle of hot tea and a couple of rashers of bacon. The bacon was perfectly cooked.

"You master bacon-frying but burn eggs?" Lily asked, sitting down at the table, pouring herself a cup of tea.

"I used magic on the bacon. I thought I'd try doing the eggs by hand."

"Why?" She looked over at him. The pan was Scourgifying behind him, enchantment frothing up like soap bubbles.

Sev shrugged, scowled, looked down at his feet. Lily bit into a piece of bacon and forced herself to swallow it.

"Come sit with me," she said, when it became apparent that Sev wasn't going to move from his spot in the kitchenette. She pulled the chair out from under the table and dragged it over beside her. When Sev finally sat down, she pushed her plate aside and lay her head on his shoulder.

"Thanks for cooking," she said.

"Don't expect it to happen again."

Lily wasn't in the mood to smile. She turned her head so that her face was buried in the crook of his arm. He smelled like her bath soap, and when he leaned in to kiss her the ends of his hair were damp.

"Where's my wand?" Lily asked. "I should send another Patronus - I don't want Remus showing up."

Sev seemed stiffen beside her. "No," he said. "I would prefer not to have him -  _sniffing_ around."

Lily ignored him. She'd sent her Patronus a twice last night, before she finally fell asleep, and Sev had watched, scowling, from the bed as she'd done so. He hadn't said anything, but she could tell he didn't like that she was alerting Remus to her safety. Any other time, it would have irritated her - but right now she wanted his possessiveness, petty and ridiculous though it was. She didn't like  _encouraging_ it, really, but she liked that it was there, wrapping around her like a blanket.

"I don't know why you would trust him, of all people," Sev said, when the white doe cascaded out of her wand and disappeared through the walls.

Lily just looked at him. "Should I have sent it to Sirius instead?"

Sev glared at her.

"Oh, stop it," she said. She threw her wand on the sofa, crossed the room, grabbed Sev by the hands, and pulled him to his feet.

"You shouldn't trust him," Sev said, and she set his arms around her waist and lay her head on his chest.

"It's not about trust," she said. "It's about not wanting him to stop by and check up on me." She closed her eyes, let Sev's arms and body and warmth and scent envelop her. "Him or anyone else in the Order."

"Afraid of what they'd do to you if they found out you were harboring a Death Eater?"

"Afraid what they'd do to you."

He had no reply to that. Lily slipped her hands under the fabric of shift. She wanted to feel his skin against hers. He was so close to her but it wasn't close enough.

She pulled the shift up over his head.

He blinked in surprise, and even started to pull away, but she grabbed his wrists and gazed up at him. "Please," she said. And then she took off her own clothes, her thin thermal shirt and her jeans, her bra and her underpants. Everything seemed far away except for this - last night she had killed two people, and now all she wanted was for Sev to be inside of her, as if by going through the motions of creating a life she could counteract the two that she had taken.

He stared at her naked body, and his eyes were already glowing with desire. She grabbed his hand and led her into the bedroom. His spell still burned in the corner - a tracking spell, he'd told her last night. There she was, tucked safe away in her flat. Not dead.

Wordlessly, Sev lay down on the bed, and Lily slipped his underpants over his narrow hips and tossed them on the floor. Then she straddled him at the waist, and they kissed, his hands running up and down the length of her spine, hers tangled up in his soft damp hair. When she finally pulled away, she shook her own hair out of its braid. Sev reached up and twined that lock of white around his finger, and Lily lay her hand over his. For a moment he looked concerned, he looked as if he wanted to say something, about last night, about the white in her hair. But then she twisted her arm behind her back and grabbed him.

He gasped, and after a few moments he had a hungry look about him that made her body shiver with anticipated pleasure. She pulled his hand away from her hair and pressed it against her breast. He touched her slowly, carefully, and every part of her was burning from the inside.

She arranged herself. His hands dropped down to her hips and clenched at the flesh there, his nails sharp against her skin. His eyes were on hers, searing straight through into her brain, a pulse of coldness in her thoughts.  _I want you inside of me_ , she told him, and then he was, inside her mind and her body both. She cried out as she moved slow and steady against him, her hand balling up the pillow beside his head, but she didn't close her eyes, she didn't look away. All her thoughts were of him, his face, his body, refracted a thousand different ways like a kaleidoscope.

Inside her mind, he found the source of pleasure.

She screamed when she came, harder and more easily than she usually did, and he rolled her onto her back without breaking eye contact and finished a few minutes later, groaning and panting and whispering her name over and over as his hips shuddered against hers. It was only then that his gaze dropped away and the coldness withdrew; it left a hollowness in its place, like a hole carved in stone.

But when Lily curled up beside Sev, their bodies hot and damp and pounding, that empty place blossomed with  _his_  memories of what they had just done. She felt her body as he felt it, soft and languorous and perfect, felt her own kisses, her own caresses. Felt his love as surely as she felt her own.

And for a moment, those memories were the only memories, and for a moment, she forgot what happened the night before.

This was the greatest gift he could have given her.


	24. Snape

Severus nursed a glass of wine at the Three Broomsticks. He sat near the fire and flipped through a copy of  _The Daily Prophet_ , not reading, just looking at the pictures. It was a couple of weeks old: on the front page was a photo of Dankworth Manor, a group of Aurors standing in front of its great wooden doors, look worn-down and triumphant.  _Twenty Death Eaters Reported Missing_ , the headline screamed.

_Twenty Death Eaters_ , thought Severus,  _is nothing_. If the Dark Lord had captured twenty members of the Opposition, it would have devastated them.

Two days after the battle, the Dark Lord had called a meeting at Malfoy Manor - Inner Circle only, of course. He had not been overly concerned about the battle's outcome. In fact, when the final tally of missing Death Eaters had been read to him, he dismissed the number with a flick of his wrist: none of them had been Marked, and therefore none of them were important.

Still, Severus had asked around later, drawing up all his powers of intimidation and Legilimency, to find out their names. He didn't know why he did it, but it seemed wrong to him, somehow, not to. In the end he learned that he had known three of them, and one he had been friends with, sort of, back at Hogwarts. He didn't like thinking about those missing Death Eaters. He didn't know what the Opposition would do to them. Certainly not what the Dark Lord would do to  _his_  prisoners.

The thought left Severus feeling disquieted, at least until he Occluded it away.

Footsteps banged against the staircase leading up to the inn's rooms. Severus lifted his head expectantly.

Dumbledore stopped at the foot of the stairs and gazed at him, his blue eyes hard as ice.

"Severus," Dumbledore said. "I'm ready to speak with you."

Severus nodded and folded up the newspaper. He left it lying on the table, as he'd found it.

"I see you're interested in the Defense Against the Dark Arts position," Dumbledore said, gazing down at an unfurled piece of parchment. "I'm afraid that's not currently available."

_It will be_ , thought Severus.

"However, Professor Slughorn plans to retire at the end of the term, and I do remember your aptitude for Potions, which is why I agreed to speak with you. Come, come, we'll talk up in my room."

Potions. Severus didn't believe that for a moment. He had assumed, when the letter from Hogwarts arrived in his kitchen three days ago, that Dumbledore was hoping to entice him over to the Opposition's side as a spy. It wouldn't work. Severus refused to do anything so stupid and so dangerous: he didn't dare risk his life, or Lily's. But he still needed to come to the interview, in order to create a credible memory for the Dark Lord to find.

The room was small and neat, with a twin bed pushed up against the far wall and a desk set up near the window. Two chairs, facing each other. Stacks of parchment, a quill and ink. Severus obviously wasn't the only one called in for an interview today.

Dumbledore gestured towards one of the chairs and Severus sat, folding his hands in his lap, building up his shields, just in case. It was an odd sensation, to build walls around the Dark Lord, and not Lily.

"Tell me about your qualifications," Dumbledore said, settling back in his chair, picking up the quill.

Severus blinked. Qualifications? They were seriously going to go through this? He had expected the old man to give him the offer to spy and be done with it - then Severus could refuse and Apparate to the Dark Lord's side with an anchor memory nestled neatly inside a matryoshkaof lies and misdirection. No job at Hogwarts for Severus Snape. Not this year.

"Go on," Dumbledore said. "I remember your high marks in Potions, but I'm afraid I don't know what else you've done."

_Created killing curses for the Dark Lord Voldemort_.  _Cured Lily Evan's mangled arm after you sent her off to die_. "I apprenticed for eight months with Grunwald Wildsmith," Severus said. "Then took a job with the Clutterwell Apothecary." This was, strictly speaking, true, although Severus had quit working at the apothecary after being Marked. The Dark Lord offered more handsome recompense than did Alfred Clutterwell and his low-level laboratory work.

"Impressive," Dumbledore said. "Do you enjoy your work there?"

Severus kept his face smooth as stone. "It's rather dull, all truth be told. I'd prefer something more challenging."

"Like teaching?"

Yes, Severus supposed that  _challenging_  might be a good word for attempting to bore knowledge into the heads of children. He personally would have gone with  _foolishly impossible_ instead.

"Exactly, sir."

Dumbledore smiled. "Tell me about your, ah, dull work at the apothecary, Severus."

_What the fuck is he doing_? But Severus took a deep breath and pulled on the stale memories from his time as a Potions assistant. "I keep the laboratory clean," he said, remembering those meaningless, unbroken days. "I gather up ingredients - the more mundane ones, of course, Alfred won't send an assistant after anything genuinely interesting. I prepare potion bases. More mundanity." Was it his imagination, or did Dumbledore look  _amused_? Those cold blue eyes were twinkling like stars.

_What are you playing at, Headmaster?_

"Well, I'm afraid you'll be preparing mundane potion bases as a teacher here, though of course you'll be doing so in front of the students."

Severus resisted the urge to scowl. It was difficult.

"Tell me, what sort of potions in particular does Clutterwell's deal in? I have heard of his shop, of course, but I don't believe I've ever had the pleasure of visiting myself."

"Various things," Severus said. "He did a lot of work with protective potions, as well as subterfuge potions - disguises and so forth."

"Any healing potions?"

"Some."  _What, is Hogwarts a hospital now?_ "Minor things, you know, Invigoration Draught and the Wound-Healing potion. And of course he kept antidotes on hand for some of his, ah, more dangerous product."

"So you don't have experience with the healing arts?"

The question would have been merely nonsensical had this been a true interview, but something about Dumbledore's expression made Severus turn cold. He thought about Lily's arm. He knew she had lied about it, but she had never been a particularly good liar.

"Some," he said, knitting up shields, hardening the features of his face.

Dumbledore gazed back at him, unreadable.

"The reason I ask," he said, "is because the Potions master often provides Madame Pomfrey with healing draughts as needed. It's always nice to find someone with experience in that field."

Severus didn't say anything.

"Would you feel comfortable with that sort of work? Would it be too challenging for you?"

"Nothing's too challenging for me," Severus snapped.

Dumbledore looked at him. "Oh, I'm sure there's  _something_  you'd find a challenge," he said lightly.

Severus glowered.

"Of course, mixing up Bruise-Removal Paste for Madame Pomfrey is only a small part of your duties. Your primary purpose at the school, of course, will be that most noble of pursuits, teaching."

Severus snorted. Dumbledore didn't so much as raise an eyebrow.

"Have you ever taught before, Severus?"

"I'm afraid not." What did he care? He knew damn well Dumbledore wouldn't give the job to a Death Eater. Severus didn't even  _want_ the fucking job.

"Nothing?" Dumbledore asked. "You never showed any new apprentice the ropes at Clutterwell's?"

Severus shook his head, and Dumbledore stroked his beard and gazed at a spot on the ceiling.

"Are you  _certain_ , Severus? I seem to recall you tutoring Mr. Avery during your time at Hogwarts - and Lily Evans, surely you -"

The blood froze in Severus's veins. He saw snow and green light and evergreen trees before the shields locked everything away. "Lily Evans never needed my help," he said, Occlumency keeping his voice level and calm. "She was Head Girl."

"Ah yes, along with Mr. Potter."

Severus sneered at the mention of Potter's name - he couldn't help himself - but Dumbledore said nothing of it.

"Hmm, well, I don't know about this then, Severus." Dumbledore gave him a kind, grandfatherly smile. It made Severus's skin crawl. "Hogwarts prides itself in hiring the best professors it can, and alas, while you possess a great order of aptitude for Potions, I'm not sure you're qualified for the  _instructional_ aspect the job requires. Perhaps in a few years time, when you've gained some experience."

Severus didn't respond.

"My best to you," Dumbledore said, holding out his hand.

Severus forced himself to shake it. Dumbledore's palm was warm and dry, and his eyes were twinkling again, which put Severus on his guard.

"Give Mr. Clutterwell my regards," Dumbledore said, keeping his gaze locked onto Severus's face. "I'm sure he'll be pleased to know he hasn't lost his best assistant." A pause. "Not yet, anyway."

Severus yanked his hand away from Dumbledore and stood up, knocking the chair back as he did so. He smoothed down the front of his robes. "Thank you," he said stiffly.

"My pleasure, Mr. Snape."

Severus stalked out of the room and down the stairs. The inn was as empty as when he left it, but he didn't want to stay in Hogsmeade another second, even if he did feel like he needed a drink. Besides, the Dark Lord had instructed him to Apparate to his side immediately after the interview - "To see how it went," he said, like a father arranging his son's first job.

_Fucking weird_ , thought Severus as he buttoned up his cloak and stepped out into the barren January cold.  _It went fucking weird_.

* * *

After the battle, the Dark Lord had taken to keeping court in the eastern wing of Malfoy Manor, and so it was at Malfoy Manor that Severus found himself after his befuddling meeting with Albus Dumbledore. He lifted the heavy brass knocker on the door and let it fall once. The  _thud_  echoed back to him, and Malfoy's pale little house elf answered the door, cowering.

"I'm to go to the Eastern wing," Severus told him, and the elf squeaked and pointed, his hand trembling. Severus pitied the thing. He knew what it was like to have to obey the whims of a Malfoy.

The Eastern wing was colder than the rest of the manor, the air dry and brittle. As Severus walked, he constructed his false memory, his gift to the Dark Lord: it was easier than he expected. He did not have to erase a request to serve as a spy, and all its accompanying emotional fallout; nor did he have to create whole branches of conversation from thin air. In fact, he mostly left the interview alone, altering only his answer to Dumbledore's question about teaching experience - there, he made himself appear to have at least  _attempted_ to answer the question somewhat satisfactorily - and Dumbledore's definite  _no_.

It did not escape Severus's notice that Dumbledore had made this visit to the Dark Lord easier than it should have been. He did not have time to dwell on this realization, of course, not in the cold empty space around the Dark Lord's presence, but he suspected it was some attempt at swaying him over to the Opposition's side.

_Too dangerous_ , Severus thought.  _It's too dangerous_.

And then he stopped thinking entirely.

The Dark Lord was waiting for him in a bedroom decorated in black and white. White walls, black moulding. White coverlet, black bed frame. "Severus," he said, and he held out his pale hands. He sat in a black chair with white cushions, and he did not rise when Severus walked in, because what master rises for his servant?

"My lord," Severus said, bowing.

"Do you have something to show me?"

"Yes, my lord," and Severus knelt at the Dark Lord's feet. The Dark Lord took his face in his hands, his touch cold cold cold like rattlesnake's blood and for a brief and horrible second Severus longed for a touch that was warm.

His shields swallowed that desire whole.

The Dark Lord looked at him. He looked inside him.

The false memory thrummed between them, diamond-strong.

"Your youth," the Dark Lord said. "It seems he finds fault with your  _youth_."

"Yes, my lord."

He was still in Severus's thoughts, sifting distractedly through them, like a woman running her fingers through beach sand. "He does not yet know he'll be in need of a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher - we may still have our chance, Severus. If no other candidates come forth, he would have no choice but to hire you, yes? And why wouldn't he? You're brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant Severus."

The Dark Lord retreated from Severus's thoughts. Severus welcomed the emptiness, although the chill from where the Dark Lord had touched him remained.

"When will that be, my lord?" Severus asked. "When will the position become available?"

The Dark Lord smiled. His teeth flashed. "Patience, patience."

Severus nodded.

"It won't be long. In the early spring, perhaps. Before the term has finished." Another smile, this one slow and sleek and sinister. "Make me another curse in the interim. I do so love your curses. They're like music."

"Thank you, my lord."

The Dark Lord peered into Severus's thoughts again, but this was a cursory glimpse, a brief skim of the surface. He wasn't looking for anything, Severus knew, he was _reminding_ him - reminding him that if Severus did not do as he should, the Dark Lord would know. He would look inside his head and he would know.

Although with Severus, he always found what what he wanted to see.


	25. Snape

Two and a half weeks passed. The world stayed frozen and grey, and snow fell on into February. More and more, Lily slept at Severus's house.

She was sleeping now, tucked away beneath the pile of blankets on his bed. There had been dreams last night, nightmares filled with green light and ash and blood. He'd gotten a flash of them, inadvertently, when she woke up screaming and he moved to comfort her and her eyes locked into his.

The fear had been so thick he nearly choked on it.

She eventually fell asleep after casting Lumos on her heart, but even then Severus could tell that her sleep was fitful and strained. She tossed and turned beside him on the bed, and the glow in her skin was too bright in the darkness. He had lain on his back for close to an hour, staring up at the ceiling and listening to her whimper in her sleep, when it occurred to him that he hadn't felt the faint, insistent tug of the Dark manipulation draught he'd made for her before Christmas. He'd gotten used to it, that sensation pulling at the edge of his thoughts, and now it was gone. It'd been gone for - what? The last few days? Longer? He couldn't remember.

_She ran out_. He wondered why she didn't say anything. Still afraid of the Dark Arts, probably. Willing to use it even after the battle at Dankworth Manor, but not so willing to ask him for more.

Severus crawled out of bed and dressed. It was still dark outside, but when he walked into his study he could hear the rumbles and whistles of the factory as it started up its day. He could remember waking up to that racket every morning as a child - the call to work, the mechanized voice shouting through the speaker system, urging on higher productivity or whatever it was factory foreman concerned themselves with. He could never quite make out the words, only the scratchy, incessant droning. When he came home after his first year, he cast a silencing spell on his room to block out the noise, and that was the end of it. He wasn't supposed to do magic as a minor but his mother let him do what he wanted, because she didn't give a shit. Not about Ministry rules, and not about him.

He pulled the ingredients for the manipulation draught off his shelf and lined them up on the desk. Potions, as a discipline, was closer to the Dark Arts than any of the magic taught at places like Hogwarts and endorsed by people like Dumbledore - all those spiders and lizards sacrificing their lives so wizards could change their hair color at will. Regular Potions came naturally to Severus, almost instinctually, and always had. But Dark Potions was different. Philistines thought dragging a knife over your palm and dropping in a few drops of blood was all it took to turn a Potion dark, but the truth, like all truths, was more complex. Dark Potions required thought - literally. Your thoughts were the sacrifice. Your memories, your impressions of the past. The tapestry of your emotions. You had to regulate yourself very carefully if you did not wish to lose something too precious.

Severus had his Occlumency, but it was still difficult.

He lit the bottom of the cauldron and set the first three ingredients to simmering. He pulled a book off the shelf and flipped through the pages, half-reading, half-listening to the gurgle of the potion. He let down the barriers enough to pluck a memory for the sacrifice - it needed to be something pleasant. This potion was to serve as an antidote for madness and sorrow. You could not fight fire with fire.

He dropped far, far back, all the way to his third year. He and Lily were standing at the back of Zonko's, and Severus pulled a Frog Spawn Soap off the rack and poured water over it so that the soap would dissolve into a hundred tiny frogs that exploded across the shop. When Lily laughed she covered her mouth with her hand and her eyes sparkled as she looked at him, and he knew he had made her happy.

That one would do.

Severus picked up his wand and leaned over the cauldron. The potion was dark blue now, almost black, the surface shining like oil. He dipped his wand in and stirred twice, then added a sprinkle of asphodel and whispered the incantation, a sentence in a Dark language, calling for a road into the mind.

He remembered making Lily laugh.

The shields protected his other memories, and they kept out the misery that would ruin the potion beyond repair. As he stirred, he closed his eyes and watched Lily laugh over and over, her hand coming to her mouth, her eyes sparkling.

The colors drained out first, turning muted, then muddy, then shades of grey. The shadows disappeared, the light. There was a only a flat silver expanse where his memory had been, and the sound of Lily's laughter, twinkling like starlight.

Then that disappeared as well.

Severus removed his wand and tapped it against the side of the cauldron. The draught lightened as he watched, turning a color like the sky at twilight. The sheen transformed into the streaks of pale silver that gave the potion its distinctive glimmer.

He sighed and slumped back in his chair, head in his hand, hair falling stringy and lank around his arm. The Dark Mark lay in wait, silent and painless. He wished he could have sacrificed some memory of the Dark Lord, or of Avery or Malfoy, any of them, instead of - it was gone, of course, but he knew it had been about Lily.

When he'd told her that his only happy memories concerned her, that day in the woods, he had not been lying.

Severus poured the draught into a jar and clipped off a lock of his hair. Then he went into the kitchen and rummaged around in one of the drawers until he found a scrap of old ribbon that must have been left there when his mother moved away, and he tied the hair to the jar. The potion was still warm.

He slipped it into the bottom of Lily's purse, which was lying in a puddle next to the front door.

When he walked back into his bedroom, Lily was stretched out across the bed, her eyes open, her hair fanning out across the pillow, dull auburn in the shadows save for that strip of white, like moonlight. Whenever Sev looked at it, that piece of white hair, anger flashed like lightning, bright and brief: anger at Dumbledore and Voldemort, at Lily, at himself.

He never Occluded it away.

"Sev," she said. "Why are you up so early?"

"You snore."

"I do not." She laughed. The sound jarred something inside of him, something he couldn't quite identity. "Come back to bed. My feet are cold."

"That's not a compelling reason for me to crawl into bed with you." But he did anyway, and she curled up beside him, one hand stroking the side of his neck. Her feet were cold, but the rest of her was warm. She didn't say anything now that he was beside her, and he felt her mood settle and dim.

He pulled her closer, and she nuzzled against him, and they stayed that way, waiting for sunlight to come.


	26. Lily

Lily found the potion in the back room of Betty Vane's Robes and Other Magic Garments, when she tossed her purse on the counter and heard the clink of glass through its thick fabric. No one else was back there, and she pulled the potion out and held it up to the light. Sev's hair seemed to shine blue.

_He thought I ran out_. She was close - there was a thin film left in the last vial, and a few hairs as well, carefully folded between two sheets of Muggle plastic wrap she'd nicked from her mum's house - but she hadn't used it up up completely. Not yet.

She should have told him. She should have asked if it was safe -

"Ms. Evans, I need you out here  _now_."

Lily shoved the potion back into her purse. "I'm coming!" she called out, running her fingers through the tangles in her hair. She'd finally fallen asleep in Sev's arms and woken up when the sunlight hit her face - ten minutes after she was scheduled to go into work.

As much as Lily loved the trains, she had to admit that Apparition had its moments.

Betty Vane had her first customer of the day, an old pure-blood-looking lady, up on the measuring stool. They lady looked right through the both of them as if they were furniture, but when Betty saw Lily she jabbed her wand in the direction of the door. "Hogwarts is having a damned Valentine's dance," she said.

"Since when?" Lily asked.

"Do I look like I'd know the answer to that? You're the one who just graduated." Betty wrapped the measuring tape around the pure blood lady's waist, who sniffed. "Oh, Mrs. Mulciber, you're as trim as ever."

"Don't patronize me," Mrs. Mulciber said.

Betty gave her a dazzling smile, as if Mrs. Mulciber had said something witty and charming. "Anyway," Betty added, turning to peer at Lily over her shoulder. "If yesterday's anything to go by, the mums'll be pouring in here looking to outdo one another via their daughters. I want you to stand by the door and intercept them."

"Intercept them?"

"Yes. They'll rip each other's throats out if we don't keep them under supervision."

Mrs. Mulciber make a clicking noise in the back of her throat. "It's all the Muggle-born trash," she said. "You oughtn't to let them in your store, Ms. Vane."

"I've had the same thought myself." Betty Vane smiled again. Lily knew she didn't mean it. She just wanted Mrs. Mulciber's pure-blood money.

Lily sighed and trudged up to the front of the store. The sun was out, pale and bright. The snow in Sev's front yard had glittered like sugar when she ran out to Apparate to work, but of course the alley's magic kept any weather out of the street. She wished it didn't, on days like this. It would have been nice to have something interesting to look at it. Right now, the alley was mostly empty - it was a week day, and early enough in the morning that the homemakers hadn't come crawling out of their houses yet. Lily chewed on her thumbnail and watched the window of the plant shop across the street, vines slithering across the glass, enlivened by the sun.

Her period hadn't come this month.

She didn't like to think about it, but she had thought about it long enough to stop taking Sev's sleeping potion. It was Dark; it might hurt the baby - if there was a baby at all, of course. Lily had somehow gotten it into her head that when she got pregnant she would  _know_ it, she would feel the baby growing inside her like magic. But she didn't feel any different. She didn't even get sick in the mornings - she knew that was one of the signs, but maybe it was different for witches.

And she'd been so careful with the birth control, drinking it every day, whether she'd been with Sev or not - so perhaps it was nothing. Stress, maybe. From the battle. She still thought about the battle a lot. More than she thought about her missed period.

The bell on the door chimed, startling Lily out of her reverie. A haughty-looking dark-haired woman stepped in, dressed in impeccable French houndstooth robes, a pair of dark sunglasses hiding her eyes. She took those sunglasses off and looked Lily up and down. Then she smiled.

"I'm here to find a gown for my daughter," the woman announced.

_And I'm supposed to care why_? Lily thought. If she'd actually said it aloud, Sev would have been so proud of her. What she actually said was:

"For the Hogwart's dance?"

"Of course. I want something in  _blue_ , if you will." She scanned the shop. When her eyes passed over Mrs. Mulciber, Lily swore she saw her recoil slightly. Mrs. Mulciber, of course, pretended not to notice her.

Lily resisted the urge to smile.

"Blue silk," the woman said. "Continental style, I think. Something classic. Elegant."

"Of course," said Lily, who knew that "classic" meant "boring" and that Betty kept a whole rack of boring gowns done up in the four Hogwarts house colors precisely for women like this one. Her daughter, no doubt, was dreaming of trendy Muggle clothes, disco spangles and spandex.

"Betty has Sophia's measurements on file," the woman added. "Sophia Starkey. I'd like to see what you have available." She lifted her chin as she spoke, trying to approximate Mrs. Mulciber's look of haughty superiority. It didn't work - this woman didn't look through Lily as if she were made of glass.

Lily slipped off to the back of the shop and pulled a blue silk gown off the rack. The woman trailed behind her, glancing over the more fashionable gowns Betty kept at the front of the shop and wrinkling her nose.

"Would this work?" Lily asked.

The woman fingered the gown's fabric between her thumb and forefinger and  _hmmned_.

"Would you like to see it on a model?" Lily asked, going through the motions by rote. She didn't wait for an answer, just waved her wand over the robe. It billowed up into the air and took on the form of an invisible woman. Perfectly proportioned. "I can show it to you in your daughter's measurements," Lily added.

The gown hovered above the racks, fabric rippling and glowing from the magic. It looked like a ghost.

"The sleeves are a little -  _ostentatious_ ," the woman said.

Lily made sure the woman was gazing at the dress before rolling her eyes. "We can made adjustment as needed," she said. "Are they too - long or -?"

"They shouldn't drag on the  _floor_ , don't you think?"

_That's what Continental style_ means _,_ thought Lily.

The bell chimed. Lily glanced back - a pair of women, this time, well-dressed, older. They had the look of Hogwarts mothers.

"Lily!" Betty's voice rang out through the shop, the sharpness subtle enough that only Lily could recognize it. "I need you at the front of the store, please."

The first woman frowned.

Lily sighed and excused herself. She was used to it. She'd been working here since graduation. Sometimes she wondered what her teachers would say, if they'd known she turned out to be nothing more than a shopgirl on a second-rate wizarding alley.

_The same thing the Order would say_ , she thought,  _if they knew I was in love with a Death Eater_.

_If they knew I slept with him._

_If they knew I missed my period._

* * *

When Lily's shift ended, she didn't Apparate straight home, as she intended. She didn't Apparate to Sev's house, either. She didn't Apparate anywhere.

She walked down Everthorne Alley to the apothecary.

The alley was mostly empty, as it had been that morning, and cold. The lanterns glowed from their heavy steel posts, casting pure blue-white light that swallowed up the shadows. When Lily stepped into the apothecary shop, the woman behind the counter gave her a smile, which Lily didn't return.

_I'll just look_ , she thought.  _See how much it costs_.

The pregnancy-test scrolls were in the back of the shop, next to the birth control. It was a spell you cast on yourself, that much Lily knew - beyond that, the details were hazy, bits of gossip and rumors overheard in the girls' dormitory. She unrolled one of the scrolls and read through the spell. It was fairly involved, lengthy, but the magic itself was simple. You could cast variations to learn the sex, hair and eye color and birth weight, even temperate.

Lily stared at the scroll for a long time. Then she rolled it back up and walked to the front of the store.

The cashier smiled as she took Lily's money. Lily forced herself to return the smile, thinking of all those times at Hogwarts when she choked her sadness and insecurity back behind that painful bright smile, so that when people looked at her they would only see pretty Lily Evans, Head Girl.

"Good luck," the cashier said. Her eyes sparkled. "And congratulations."

Lily nodded, snatched the scroll away, and scrambled out of the store. She shoved the scroll into her purse, next to Sev's potion, and Apparated back to her flat.

There was a message waiting for her from Sev, a little black box created out of magic that spoke with his voice when she tapped it with her wand -  _It's not safe for you after all_ , the box said, the words marred with staticky interference.  _I'll contact you the usual way when it is_. Then a long pause, and for a second Lily thought she heard a sharp intake of breath. Then:  _I love you_.

Lily's own breath hitched, and she tapped the wand again and whispered, " _Abiette_." The box - and Sev's message, Sev's voice saying  _I love you_  - disappeared into smoke.

She pulled out a cigarette from the pack sitting on the table and sank into the couch. Stuck the cigarette into the corner of her mouth. She was reaching for her wand when she remembered: you can't smoke. Not if there's a baby.

Lily dropped her hand in her lap, letting the cigarette dangle from her lips, tasting the thin paper and the tobacco. The back of her throat ached for the cigarette's burn, but she only sat unmoving, trying to feel the baby inside of her, a little cluster of cells that was part her and part Sev. She didn't feel anything.

She crumbled the cigarette up in the ashtray, then grabbed the spell-scroll out of her purse. She sat down at the kitchen table and smoothed out the parchment, weighing down one end with Sev's potion and the other with her flat keys.

_Just do it_.  _Just do it and then you'll_ know _._

Lily read over the directions one last time, and then she set about casting the spell.

She cast the most basic variation, the one that would only tell you  _yes_ or  _no._ It still took a long time, longer than most spells. She had to stand up beside the table and wave the wand around her body counter-clockwise fifteen times, murmuring the incantation - " _Praena Summa."_  Then she had to cast a quick placement charm and then she had to create a plane of magic in order to see the results.

It took five minutes to cast the spell and the charm, then another four or so to create the plane of magic, which was a incantation she always found difficult.

It took three and a half seconds for her results to appear.

The answer was yes.


	27. Snape

Bellatrix and Lucius came to Severus's house, Bellatrix banging on the door over and over with her fist. The wards jangled. Severus cursed and pushed away from his desk. He had hoped to see Lily today; it had been three days since the day he mixed up the madness antidote for her.

She still wasn't using it.

"I hear you!" Severus shouted as Bellatrix continued to bang on the door, her laughter cutting through the cacophony of the wards. Severus did not trust Bellatrix; he didn't trust Lucius, either, but he could at least  _predict_ Lucius. Bellatrix was far more erratic.

Severus flung the door open. Bellatrix's mania melted away when she saw him: she stopped laughing, and her posture straightened and her face smoothed over. For a moment she almost looked elegant.

Lucius looked elegant as always, of course. He also looked annoyed.

"What do you want?" Severus asked.

"We heard you were working on something exciting," Bellatrix said.

"I suppose exciting is a word for it."

"Are you going to let us in," Lucius said, "Or do you plan for us all to stand out in the cold?"

Severus glowered at him, cruelty forming on his tongue. But Lucius gazed back levelly, and smiled, and Severus remembered his place in the ranks -

But not before dipping into Lucius's thoughts, quick and darting like a fish. The Dark Lord hadn't sent them. Bellatrix was just bored.

Severus pushed the door open wider without saying anything.

Bellatrix slunk in, moving like ink dropped in water. Lucius still looked annoyed. Severus let the door slam shut behind them, then crossed his arms over his chest.

"Why are you here?" he said.

"I  _told_ you," Bellatrix said. "I want to see your new curse."

"It's not ready."

"That's not what I heeeeeard." Bellatrix giggled again. Severus suddenly missed Lily.

The shields lifted; Lily disappeared.

"Fine," he said. He gave Bellatrix a slow, lazy smile. "Since  _you're_  here. I was looking for someone to test it on."

Bellatrix hissed at him, although Lucius coughed into his fist, which he only did when he was trying not to laugh.

"Why don't we try it on Amos Crocker?" Bellatrix asked.

"Who the fuck is that?"

Lucius waved his hand. "Some blood-traitor Rodolphus picked up in London four nights ago. He's been keeping him in one of their guest bedrooms."

A vague sense of unease wormed its way through Severus's stomach.

"Rodolphus ran out of curses in four nights?" Severus sneered. "I'm surprised he made it that long."

Bellatrix laughed. "Which is why we need  _you_ , Sevvie."

"If you ever call me that again I will cut out your heart."

Bellatrix stuck out her tongue.

Severus  _had_  been working on a new curse for the Dark Lord, as requested - a curse that drew out happiness and transformed it into anguish, permanently - and it was, regardless of what he had told Bellatrix, ready. Ready for testing, at least. He didn't have  _quite_ enough confidence in his ability as a developer to hand untested spell over to the Dark Lord, although normally he shunted the spells off to some unMarked Death Eater and let them report back the results.

He never cast his own curses on another person. Not since Hogwart's. The one exception had been Lily in the Dog and Duck, and that had been to save her life.

"Please," said Bellatrix, and she made her eyes wide and innocent-looking, and she pouted, and Severus wandered how many men that actually worked on. "Pleeeeeeeease, Severus."

"Is it the only way to get you out of my house?"

Bellatrix grinned devilishly, and behind her, Lucius nodded. He was back to looking annoyed.

_The Dark Lord will want to see it soon_ , he thought.  _Get this over with and then you can see Lily-_

"Fine." Severus yanked his cloak off the coat hanger and wrapped it around his shoulders. "I'll even let you be the first to cast it." Bellatrix squealed and threw her arms around Lucius, who stood still as a statue and frowned. Severus hated both of them.

They Apparated to Lestrange Manor, and when they dropped down in the rose gardens, spiny and empty in the grey February light, that unease worked its way through Severus's stomach again, crawling up into his chest. He clamped the shields down tight even though Bellatrix's abilities as a Legilimens were nowhere near as strong as the Dark Lord's - as much as she might have wished otherwise. But he didn't want to suggest to the Lestranges, who were as close to the Dark Lord as blood relatives, that there was anything resembling doubt winding its way through his consciousness.

Anything resembling doubt, anything resembling guilt. To feel was to endanger yourself.

Rodolphus was waiting for them in the parlor, sunk back deep in a brocaded armchair, his feet kicked up on a matching ottoman. He toyed with his wand, twisting it through his fingers, swinging it back and forth. James Potter used to do the same thing before hexing Severus back at Hogwarts.

Shields. Darkness. Severus pulled out his wand.

"Where is he?" he asked.

Rodolphus dropped his head against the back of the chair and sighed. "Upstairs, fourth door on the left. He passed out.  _Dull_."

"I can bring him back around," Bellatrix said.

"That won't be necessary," Severus said.

She fixed him with a dark glare.

"Your propensity for torture is not as charming as you think it is," Severus said, wishing he had the capacity to hold back his tongue  _a bit_ more.

"You're a greasy little shit," she shot back. "And you've no idea how to have a good time."

"Agreed on both counts." Severus wondered if Rodolphus or Lucius would particularly care if he tested the new curse on Bellatrix. Probably not, but he knew both would drag him before the Dark Lord for it anyway. "Go on, then. Show me the way. I've more important things to do than tormenting blood traitors."

"Like what?"

"If the Dark Lord wanted you to know, he'd tell you."

That got her. He saw the knowledge spread across her face: just because she fucked the Dark Lord didn't mean she was his favorite. It was a good thing to remind her of, every now and then.

The four of them clomped up the stairs, Bellatrix sulky and clinging to Lucius's arm, Rodolphus sneaking jealous looks. Severus followed behind. He didn't want to do this. He never wanted to do things like this, particularly, but today the prospect was turning his stomach into twists and knots. He kept seeing flashes of Lily. When they came to the top of the stairs he thought he smelled her, lavender and smoke, and his heart pounded and white dots flitted at the edge of his vision, and he had to Occlude away everything but the curse incantation to stop himself from walking out of the Manor - which was the same as walking out to his own death.

"So what does this brilliant curse of yours do?" asked Lucius, as they came to the fourth door on the left.

Severus hardly remembered. Everything was buried so deep. "Wait five minutes and you'll find out," he sneered.

Amos Crocker was collapsed on the floor of the room, his arms and legs flung out at unnatural angles, his chest heaving. Bellatrix giggled when she saw him, and he cried out at the sound of her laughter, tossing his head back and forth, moaning the word  _no_  over and over again.

Severus wondered if Crocker even had any happiness left _._ He wondered if he had his own Lily Evans, a lover who knew how he liked to be kissed, whose smile could transform him.

And then Severus wondered how he could possibly take that away from him. If someone took Lily away, if they took that  _happiness_  away, he would kill them.

"What are you waiting for?" Bellatrix asked. "I thought you had better things to do."

Severus looked at her. "Don't you want to do it?"  _Shit. Shit shit shit._

"I don't know it."

" _Desperio_ ," he said. "Cast it like any other curse."

"It's that easy?" She arched an eyebrow. There was a darkness in her face that hadn't been there before. A shadow of suspicion.

"The Dark Lord requires simplicity," Severus said breezily. "The Dark Mark isn't a symbol of  _intelligence_." He curled up his lip. "After all, youhave one."

Bellatrix snarled at him, that hissing growling cat-noise she did whenever she was angry. The suspicion had washed out of her features, but Severus kept his guards up - he didn't dare dip into her head. She would know.

"I'll never understand why the Dark Lord keeps lowborn trash like you around," she said, but there was an edge to her voice that suggested that Dark Lord had told her  _exactly_ why he kept Severus around, and she hated Severus for it.

"Well, we all know why he keeps  _you_ around," Severus said.

Bellatrix didn't react, although Rodolphus's face turned bright red and he took a few wobbling steps back, toward the wall. Lucius watched on with a faint smile playing at the ends of his mouth.

"I would destroy you in seconds," Bellatrix hissed, swiping her wand back and forth.  _"Seconds_."

"Or you could destroy him," Severus said, tilting his toward Crocker, who was whimpering and cowering and watching the two of them fight with desperation in his eyes. "And I could go home and get the rest of my work done." He paused, thinking back on that flicker of suspicion he'd seen earlier. "Unless of course you think you can't do it -"

"Of course I can fucking do it!" And in one fast liquid movement Bellatrix pointed her wand at Crocker's heart and spat out the incantation. The curse sparked, and for a moment Crocker turned pale and stricken.

Then he began to weep.

"That's it?" Bellatrix asked.

"The curse creates sorrow. He won't stop crying," Severus said in his empty Occluded voice. He stared at Crocker and felt something trying to break through his shields, some bright, painful emotion.

Bellatrix looked at him. "Ever?" she said.

Severus nodded. Crocker's tears rolled down his face in rivers. He'd grown silent, and he looked from Severus to Bellatrix to Rodolphus to Lucius and back again. The tears on his face shone like glass.

"This is even more dull than when he was passed out," Rodolphus said.

Severus didn't answer. Bellatrix was no longer casting dark looks his way - she'd wandered over to Rodolphus and slung her arm round his shoulder and the two of them slouched against the wall, watching Crocker and scowling. It occurred to Severus that he should be more careful with her - although he hated the idea of Bellatrix Lestrange being able to best him in any way.

He turned back to Crocker, who blinked at him, and Severus's shields knitted themselves more tightly together.

"Can we still cast Cruciatus on him?" Bellatrix asked.

Inside, Severus blanched.

"What would be the point?" he asked. "He's got nothing left."  _You did this. You did this to him_.  _Not Bellatrix._

"Does it at least kill him?" Rodolphus asked.

"It's not a killing curse."

"Oh, that's fantastic," said Bellatrix. "We brought you over here to show us something  _fun_ and now we've got a fucking -  _weeper_ in the guest bedroom."

"A weeper?" Severus asked.

Bellatrix jabbed her wand at Crocker.

"I know who you meant. Weeper? Really? You couldn't come up with something more clever?"

Bellatrix glared at him.

"So kill him, then," said Severus. "You wanted to see what I was working on and I showed you. Now I've other things to do, and it's not my jobto create spells to entertain you."  _No, my_ job  _is far, far worse._

Severus snuck one last glance at Crocker, who had pushed his back up against the bed and drawn his knees to his chest. Severus wished he could do undo what Bellatrix had done. There was probably a way - maybe it wouldn't eradicate the curse completely, but if he could bring some of Crocker's happiness back, maybe the tightness coiling up in his stomach would go away.

"This is so  _dull_ ," said Bellatrix. " _You_ are so dull, Severus." She turned to Crocker. "Avada Kedavra!"

A flash of green, and all of Severus's hopes crashed around his feet. He had taken that man's happiness away and he hadn't been able to give it back.

Outwardly, Severus did nothing. He didn't move, he kept his face blank.

"There," said Bellatrix. "Rodolphus, go find us someone else to play with." She pouted. "And ask Kevin Crook to come over. I'm sure his spells are  _much_ more interesting."

The tightness in Severus's stomach twisted.

Bellatrix glanced over at him, then hooked her eyes into his. The shields flew up. She skulked in, cold and unpleasant as the Dark Lord, and Severus sent out a blast of fury and rage, screaming wordlessly at her to get the fuck out. She gasped and pulled back.

They glared at each other. She was staring at the bridge of his nose. Good.

"If you no longer have need of me," Severus said. "I think I'll be on my way."

"Maybe your next curse will be worth my time," Bellatrix said.

_Maybe I'll use my next curse on you_. But Severus didn't deign to answer her out loud, and he strode out of Lestrange Manor, leaving behind those friends-who-were-not-his-friends, those people he had yearned to impress all his time at Hogwarts.

He realized, with a start, that he didn't care about any of them anymore. Not in the slightest.


	28. Snape

Severus was listless for the next few days. He didn't dare send word to Lily until he knew for certain that Bellatrix and the others wouldn't come back around his house. He missed her, missed the feel of her body against his and the smell of her skin, missed the way she smiled whenever she saw him and the way she didn't let his honesty - his  _harshness_  - drive her away.

Plus she still hadn't taken the nightmare antidote. When he saw her, he would ask why. He would tell her that Dumbledore could bugger off if it meant forcing her to keep having those nightmares.  _Bravery_. Severus scoffed.

When he couldn't stand it any longer, Severus sent word:  _It's safe. I want to see you_. He wrote  _need_ but changed it at the last moment, even though it was the truth.

When the message sparked off into the cold grey air, Severus sank down on his couch and flipped through a Potions book and waited.

Five minutes later, he heard the  _thump_ of Apparation out in the snow. The wards twinkled - they stayed calm for Lily, these days. They'd become accustomed to her.

She knocked on the door. Severus unlocked it with his wand, and she eased it open, stuck in her head. Her face was drawn and pale, her hair dull, her eyes dark and sunken.

Severus stared at her.

"You haven't been sleeping." He tightened his fingers around his wand. "You haven't been taking the potion I gave you."

Lily closed the door and dropped her purse to the floor and shrugged out of her coat and hung it over the rack. It was only then that she looked up at him. There was fear in her eyes. He hadn't seen that since before Christmas.

The shields flew up without prompting.

"Well?" he said. "Why did you stop?"

She took a long time to answer. "I - I just wanted to."

"You just wanted to? Look at yourself! Have you slept at all -"

She looked away, down at the floor, and her hair fell into her face.

"It's fucking Dumbledore, isn't it? You  _told_ him about it. Why would you  _do_  that?" He jumped to his feet, frustration pulsing through his Occlumency. "Christ, Lily, there's nothing  _brave_ about tormenting yourself. Take the damn potion."

"I didn't tell Dumbledore." Lily slouched across the room and leaned against the wall. She had her hands pulled up inside the sleeves of her jumper, and she still wouldn't look at him.

"Then why?" Severus stalked over beside her. She looked at him, looked away again. "You  _like_ having nightmares? Watching people die over and over again? Is that the problem? You think you have to  _flagellate_ yourself because you cast the Avada Kedavra? For fuck's sa-"

"I'm pregnant," Lily said.

Panic and terror flooded Severus's system. For a horrible second the shields disintegrated, and he felt  _all_ of it, so strong it was like a punch in the stomach, a knife in the face.

In that deluge of emotion he shouted the first stupid thought that came to his head.

"Is it mine?"

Lily slapped him.

She didn't hit him hard. The imprint of her hand stung for a few seconds and then faded. But the contact was enough for him to recenter himself, to rebuild his shields. His Occlumency hadn't deserted him completely.

"Of course it is," he said. "I'm sorry, I just -"

"Fucker." Her eyes shimmered in the lamplight.

"I'm  _sorry_." Severus took a deep breath. Everything was turning into anger, the way it always did. He choked it down. "A baby," he said. "How could you let this happen?"

Lily glared at him. "I let you  _fuck_ me, that's how I let it happen."

"You want to start a goddamn family in the middle of a  _war_?"

"I didn't want to do anything."

"You do realize you're on the losing side."

"Good thing it's your baby."

Severus stopped.  _My baby_. For a brief second his anger sputtered.  _Lily's baby. My baby_.

But then he thought about the Dark Lord discovering the secret in Lily's womb, and his child would be dead before it even existed.

"You can't," he said.

"Can't what?"

"You can't have the  _baby_. If the Dark Lord found out -" Fear rose up again, fear not for himself but for Lily, for their child clustering up inside her. "Bloody fucking hell! I thought you were taking birth control. Oh,  _wait_ , you made it yourself. I bet you wish you hadn't stolen my notes all that time at Hogwarts, don't you? Bet you wish you'd actually expended the effort to  _learn_  something."

Her face went pale. Her eyes glittered with rage. He was so scared for the life of that baby that he couldn't stop.

"Oh, if only Slughorn could hear about  _this_. Christ, if only it had happened when we were still in school, then I wouldn't've had to listen to another second of his inane fucking  _yapping_ about how  _beautiful_ and how  _talented_ Lily fucking Evans is. Because what sort of talentless idiot can't even mix up a potion designed for fucking imbecile fourth year  _sluts_."

" _Shut up!_ " Lily screamed. Her voice rang out through the house and in the silence that followed Severus could only hear his heart beating _. "_ Shut the  _fuck_ up and listen to me." She leaned back against the wall, her chest heaving, her face red. "It's your goddamn fault.  _Yours._ You wanted to have a baby -"

"What!"

"Some part of you did. And some part of me, too. That's how it fucking works. If you want a baby, it helps you get one. If you don't, it prevents it."

A thousand cruel responses flooded Severus's thoughts, only to be blinked out by a single memory: lying next to Lily as she slept, imagining what it would be like to create a happy childhood in this awful house. Imagining that he could somehow undo the damage wrought upon him all those years ago. He wouldn't be like his parents, ever. He was capable of love. Lily sleeping naked next to him was proof of that.

_You are capable of love._

Severus stumbled away from Lily and collapsed on the couch. His blood pounded. Lily stayed next to the wall, one hand pressed against her stomach in a thoughtless, distracted way. He wondered if she even realized what she was doing.

"You wanted to have a baby with me," Severus said. "Why?"

"Because I love you," Lily said. "I'm not stupid. I would never have consciously decided - I know what side of the war I'm on. But it's happened." She shook her head, and then her face cracked into a brief, flickering smile. "I knew I should have used Muggle birth control."

Severus laughed. She watched him. The rage had died away from her eyes, although she still looked serious, and scared, too. He realized now she wasn't scared of him.

"I didn't mean what I said," he told her. "About - Slughorn and the rest."

"I know." Lily tilted her head at him. "Trust me. I'm used to you by now."

"Is it a boy or a girl?"

The question slipped out. Even Severus hadn't expected it.

"I don't know. I didn't cast the spell to find out." Lily pushed away from the wall and sat beside him on the couch. She laid one hand against the back of his neck and played with the tiny, feathery hairs that grew there. "I scheduled a time to go the healer. Next week. If you would go with me -"

Severus's heart fell. "No, Lily, it's too dangerous. If someone saw -"

"Then Polyjuice yourself." Lily pressed her cheek against the back of the couch and looked at him, eyes luminous with lingering tears. "Yes, I can recognize Polyjuice potion when I see it. You've got plenty." She smiled sadly. "Just this once, okay? Just the first time."

Looking at her, knowing she was to be the mother of a child he thought he could never have -

He couldn't possibly say no.


	29. Lily

Lily arranged to meet with Albus at Order headquarters the same afternoon she was scheduled to visit the healer. She didn't tell him why, and he didn't ask.

He was waiting for her when she arrived, sitting in front of the fireplace with a tray of tea and biscuits. Lily stood up and dusted the ash and Floo powder off her clothes.

"You didn't have to provide snacks," she said, when she saw the tray.

Albus's eyes twinkled. "Something told me our conversation would require Darjeeling. Come, sit."

Lily took a deep breath and slid into the chair. She hugged her purse against her lap and fiddled with the strap as Albus poured her a cup of tea, steaming and hot.

"Should I protect our words?" Albus asked, peering up at her. She knew the code:  _is this about Severus?_

"No," Lily said. She sipped her tea; it seared the tip of her tongue, and she set the cup down, took to fiddling with her purse strap again.

"I hope you don't mind me saying, but you seem rather flustered."

Lily tossed him a smile. "Well, I am rather flustered, I -" She stopped. She had paced in front of the public Floo station for nearly ten minutes, telling herself over and over that she would be brave and insistent and strong. At least she wasn't exhausted and sleep-deprived anymore; Sev had assured her the potion wouldn't harm the baby, and so she'd started taking it again, and now she no longer dreamed of the battle at Dankworth Manor.

Lily knew the request she wanted to make of Albus wasn't unreasonable in the slightest, but it happened to dovetail with exactly what she had wanted all along, and so that made it hard to ask for.

"I found out recently," she said, speaking slowly, watching Albus's face, which was kind and serious. "That I'm, ah, that I'm going to have a baby."

Something fluttered across Albus's features, a shadow like a bird passing over.

"My," he said. "That's somewhat - unexpected."

Lily looked down at her hands.

"I won't fight anymore," she said. "I don't care if I know Dim spells or not. No more raids, no more battles." She took a deep breath and forced her head up.

Albus bit into a biscuit, set it back down on its plate.

"That's understandable," he said.

"I'm not quitting the Order," Lily said. "Please, don't make me - I just won't fight. It's too dangerous. For the baby."  _For me_. "You can find me something else to do."

Albus blinked at her. His eyes were so blue it hurt to look at them.

"And what about your primary task?" he asked, picking up a cup of tea and swirling it. He didn't drink. "Do you wish to be removed from that as well?"

"Sev isn't dangerous," Lily said, without thinking. Albus didn't react, though, just set his cup down with a  _clink_ and leaned forward.

"Are you certain?" he asked.

Lily bit back the urge to shout at Albus that she had never been more certain of anything in her entire life. She clenched her fingers around the strap of her purse instead. Then she nodded.

Albus settled back in his chair. "I see." He stroked his beard. "I would never send a woman with child into battle, Lily. Surely you know that."

Lily shrugged.

"So I'm glad you told me. If you feel comfortable with your current task, you may continue on with it." He peered at her. "I take it the pregnancy will not interfere?"

Lily had no answer to that. She shook her head dumbly, not looking Albus in the eye.

"Well, that's good." He smiled. His face transformed, and he stopped being Albus and became Headmaster Dumbledore at one of the welcoming feasts, friendly and accepting and kind-hearted. "I suppose some congratulations are in order, aren't they?

"Congratulations?" Lily said weakly.

Albus nodded at her stomach. "Aren't you happy about it, my dear?"

Lily let her hands drop away from her purse. "Yes," she said, and it was the truth. "Of course I'm happy."

Albus smiled again. "Hope," he said. "That's what a baby is. Hope for the future."

"Don't you dare make my baby into a symbol for the Order." As soon as she said it, Lily froze. Sev was rubbing off on her, it seemed.

But Albus was unperturbed. "Of course not, dear. Your baby is a person." He paused. "Would it be too untoward if I asked who the father is?"

Lily didn't know if that question was untoward or not. She knew everyone would wonder, once the word got out that Lily Evans was pregnant. She also knew that in this matter, she couldn't lie, but she couldn't tell the truth, either.

"It's someone I love," Lily said.

Albus smiled.

* * *

The healer kept an office on Diagon Alley, set off in a side street a little ways down from the main cluster of shops. Lily sat on an uncomfortable metal bench and waited for Sev.

She didn't know what he was going to look like.

About five minutes before her appointment was scheduled to begin, a young man with shaggy dark hair and a squat, muscular build stepped into the cold shadows of the side street. He wore Muggle clothes, though he seemed ill-suited in them.

"Lily," the young man said in Sev's midnight-soft voice. "I don't know how you can stand this place. All the  _fucking_ people -" He grabbed her by both hands and pulled her to her feet - his palms were rough and calloused, not like Sev's at all, although the touch was the exact same.

He kissed her.

It was strange, to be kissed by someone who was both Sev and not-Sev - the body was different, large and overwhelming, and the course stubble of his beard rasped against her mouth. But she could still feel Sev moving beneath his skin, like a watermark.

Sev broke the kiss and nuzzled against her neck. "I never thought I would be able to do that to you in public," he whispered.

Lily's heart warmed. "Me neither."

They held each other for a little longer, kissing in the quiet half-privacy of the side street. Then Lily pressed her palm against Sev's new rough face. "Who are you anyway?" she said quietly.

"One of my neighbors." Sev lay his forehead against hers. "Had to steal some of his clothes, too. Mine wouldn't fit."

Lily laughed and kissed him again. She didn't want to stop - it was true, there was something intoxicating about kissing him on Diagon Alley, in full view of the entire wizarding world, and not having it matter one bit.

"You don't want to be late for your appointment," Sev murmurred, pulling away. "Besides," he added, lowering his voice. "I've only got about an hour and a half."

"It won't take that long." Lily slipped her hand into his and squeezed. Another thing she never thought she'd be able to do. Together, they walked down the side street until they came to the healer's office -  _Madame Tring, Midwivery and Funereal Preparations_.

"Well, that's a combination," Sev said.

Lily elbowed him. "All midwives are funerealists too. Don't you know anything?"

"I know she better not cast the afterlife charm on that baby."

Lily rolled her eyes and pushed into the office. Inside, the air smelled like peppermint and eucalyptus, and a tiny bell twinkled as it grazed across the top of the door. The waiting area was empty. Newspapers lay scattered across the table, the photographs flashing and blinking. Some grey-green plant grew along the walls, the vines rustling as they twined into each other.

Lily pressed herself against Sev, wrapped her arm in his, like the vines.

A grey-haired witch in diaphanous white robes burst through the curtain leading, Lily imagined, off into the examination rooms. "Lily Evans?" she asked.

Lily nodded.

"I'm Madame Tring." She smiled, a flash of white teeth, then veered straight to Lily without even looking at Sev. She lay her wand against Lily's stomach - Lily felt Sev tense beside her, although thank God he didn't try anything - and dipped her head low, as if she were listening to faint music.

"Ah!" she said. "Healthy as can be."

Lily beamed at Sev. When he smiled back, she recongized it immediately, even though this smile was crooked and mischevious, and Sev's smile was like moonlight spreading across a lake.

"Come back, come back," Madame Tring said, gesturing at the curtain. "I'm sure you'll be wanting to know the sex and all that - did you cast one of those over-the-counter pregnancy spells?"

"Um, just to find out if I was pregnant."

"Oh, you certainly are  _that_ , my dear." Madame Tring held the curtain aside. Lily ducked her head as she walked through. "You too," Madame Tring said to Sev. "Don't you start thinking babies are only women's work. You best start making yourself part of the process now. Don't you think you can wheedle out of it just because you aren't the one that has to lay yourself out and push for five hours. Those diapers aren't gonna change themselves."

Sev's burnished working-class face went pale.

"That's right, honey," Lily said. "You better listen to her.  _Diapers_." She watched each of Sev's retorts flare up behind his eyes - and then sputter out as he repressed them one by one. He scowled, but that only made Lily laugh and scoop his hand in hers.

Madame Tring led them through a twisting labyrinth of a hallway. The scent of peppermint and eucalyptus grew stronger the further in they went.

"Here we are!" she said cheerfully. "In you go, both of you."

The examination room looked like every magical examination room LIly had ever been in - which is to say, it looked like a sitting room. Healers didn't require their patients to disrobe.

"So your baby is healthy," Madame Tring said, folding her hands over her stomach. Her wand poked out from between her fingers. "Except it to pop out around November or so. I see no problems at this stage, although you'll want to check back every month just to be sure."

Lily nodded, and Sev tightened his grip on her hand.

"Now the reason I was askng about those over-the-counter spells is because they don't work terribly well, and I always like to run the checks myself. I get witches coming in here thinking they'll be having a boy only to find out they're having a girl -" Madame Tring shook her head. "The things people get their hopes up about."

"Do you know?" Sev asked. "If it's a boy or a girl?"

"Of course I do, young man. The question is, do you want to?"

Sev looked at Lily. She shrugged. "Sure," she said. Everyone was going to be asking anyway, once they figured out she wouldn't tell them who the father was.

"A girl," Madame Tring said. "Pretty little thing. Dark-haired like her father."

Lily's heart swelled.

"Now, don't be asking me to tell you what she'll look like once she's grown - we can only project so far."

"Of course," Lily said.

"What about temperment?" Sev asked. "Can you tell us that?"

Madame Tring clucked. "You've been reading through those damned spell-scrolls, haven't you? No, I can't tell you temperment, and even if I could, I wouldn't do it."

Lily pressed up against Sev.  _She'll be like both of us_ , she thought.  _She's ours_.

"Do you want to see her?" Madame Tring asked, eyes sparkling. "The way she is now, of course, I can't show you what she'll look like once she's born. But still. It's something to see."

"Yes," Sev said, answering so quickly that Lily blinked up at him in surprise.

"All right then, come here." Madame Tring held out her arms. Lily relunctantly dropped Sev's hand out of her own and stepped forward. "Lift up your jumper, dear. That's good." Madame Tring tapped her wand against Lily's bare stomach and muttered a rather complicated-sounding incantation, and Lily felt something glowing inside her womb. She let out a little yelp of suprise.

Madame Tring drew her wand back, pulling with it a gossamer strand of golden light, as fine as a spiderweb. The strand coiled around the tip of her wand, and Madame Tring held it into the empty air above Lily's head and muttered another incantation. The strand flared out and formed into a curl of light.

"There," Madame Tring said. "There's your baby."

It didn't really look human, but Lily still couldn't stop staring at it. She peeked at Sev - he was staring too, his unfamiliar eyes wide and, Lily throught, somewhat stricken.

"Oh," he said.

"Doesn't look like much right now, I know. Wait 'til the third month. Starts getting a face."

"Yes," Sev said, sounding either dazed or disgusted. "Faces are good."

Lily covered her mouth with her hand so that Madame Tring wouldn't see her laughing.

"Do you want to take the image home with you?" Madame Tring asked.

"I think we'll wait until it has a face," Lily said, who couldn't imagine that little twist of light as a  _she_.

Madame Tring flicked her wand and the image cascaded to the floor in a shower of golden sparkles. "Between you and me," she said, "can't say I blame you."

Sev snorted.

"Is there anything else?" Lily asked. "Anything I should be taking or -"

"Can you keep food down?"

"Most of the time."

"You're lucky, then. Like I said, you should come back every month or so to check on the progress, and if there are any problems, anything you feel is out of the ordinary - let me know immediately."

"Like what?" Sev said. "What sort of problems?"

Madame Tring blinked at him. "I'm sorry?"

"Problems," Sev said, in that haughty Slytherin voice of his, "is much too  _vague_  - I want specifics."

Madame Tring looked amused. "Do you now?" she said. "Well, pain, generally, is a bad sign."

Sev glared at her. She laughed at him, which in turn made Sev's lip curl up into a sneer. Lily grabbed his hand.

"Pain," she said. "Anything else?"

"Dizziness," Madame Tring went on. "If you find yourself not being able to keep  _any_ food down - that might be cause for concern." She glanced over at Sev. "Don't you be bringing her in here everytime she sighs, neither. I know his type." Back to Lily. "He's just scared, is all."

Lily lay her head on Sev's broad, hard shoulder.  _I'm scared too_.

"Thank you," Lily said. "I'll send an owl about scheduling the next appointment."

"Of course, dear." Madame Tring smiled. "We'll be seeing you soon."

When they were back out on the street, Sev stomped his heavy black boots against the cobblestone.

_"Pain_ ," he snarled. "What the hell does that even mean? LIke if you get a headache or - "

"I imagine she meant pain in my -" Lily waved her hand over her stomach. "Baby area."

Sev scowled. "Details, Lily. A good wizard keeps track of his  _details_. We should see someone else. I don't trust that woman."

Lily looped her arm through Sev's and pulled him down the street, toward the hustle and throng of Diagon Alley. "Why don't we go to the bookstore and find some books on first trimester pregnancies? Will that make you feel better?"

"Stop patronizing me."

"No way! You patronize me all the time. It's only fair that I get a turn." Lily leaned against him, and he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close. They stumbled over each other's steps, and Lily laughed against his worn Muggle coat. God, she was happy. She wondered how long until the Polyjuice potion wore off, if they had time to pop into a pub for a drink, like a proper couple. "That was pretty terrifying, wasn't it?"

"What was?"

"The baby."

"Oh. That wasn't a baby. That was an embryo."

"It looked like an alien."

"How Muggle of you. I thought it looked like a flesh-eating slug, myself."

"Oh God, Sev! That's awful."

He smirked.

"That's all I'm going to be able think about now." She stopped and turned to him, keeping her hands in his. "Singing lullabies to a fucking slug. Pushing it around in a carriage.  _Breast-feeding_ it."

Sev laughed. "Thank you for that image."

"You gave it to me."

Sev reached over and tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. His hand was too wide as it brushed against her neck, and although Lily could still see Sev lingering behind those small, unfamiliar eyes, she wished it could be  _him_  here, Sev with his black hair and his tall thin body and his ridiculous dark robes.

"What's wrong?" he asked, dropping his hand down to her shoulder.

"I don't know, I just -" Lily sighed.

Sev frowned. "I'll keep you safe," he said. "I'll keep the baby safe."

Lily knew he meant safe from You-Know-Who, and she shook her head. "No, it isn't that -" Except it was. She couldn't fall in love with a normal boy and now she couldn't have a normal life.

Sev stroked her hair, tugging distractedly on the streak of white. She leaned in and kissed him, and this time their kiss was slow and deep and sad and full of all the things she was afraid to say. Afterwards, he pulled her against his chest and held her unspeaking. They didn't move for a long time, just stood there on the outskirts of Diagon Alley, pressed tight against each other in the cold grey air.

When enough time had passed that Lily thought it might be standing still, Sev said, "Everything's going to be all right," muttering into her hair like a spell, and Lily chose to believe him.


	30. Snape

Severus stretched out on his bed and flicked books off the shelf and sent them flapping around the room so that their pages whispered and stirred up the stale air. It was something he used to do as a child, before Hogwarts, before Lily, whenever his parents fought: the sort of trick children learn before they learn proper magic. It didn't require a wand, only the right frame of mind.

The books swooped around butterflies or birds or scraps of rubbish caught on the wind. When he was younger he would pretend that the books were whispering their stories to him, and if he listened hard enough sometimes the books would drown out his parents' screaming and he could pretend he was somewhere else, somewhere safe.

Today, of course, the house was silent, and Severus knew there was nowhere safe in the world. Not for him, not for Lily, not for their child.

He thought about their child a lot. A little girl, the crackpot healer-witch had said, dark-haired like her daddy - convenient that he'd chosen a dark-haired Muggle to impersonate on that trip. He hoped the rest of her didn't look like greasy . Whenever he tried to picture his future daughter he saw Lily the way she'd been when he first spotted her through the fence, only with black hair instead of red.

Sometimes he thought about that light-image the healer had drawn out of Lily's belly. The embryo. In hindsight Severus decided that it didn't _really_ look like a flesh-eating slug, but there was still something unearthly about it, this little curl of life tucked away inside Lily. He had a hard time picturing the transition from the light-image to the the black-haired Lily he saw in his head.

It felt the way magic had, before the Dark Arts and before the Dark Lord, when Severus was so young all he could do was make books fly around his room.

He wondered if his daughter would make books fly when she was sad - no, of course not, she would never be sad, he would see to that. So maybe she would make flowers grow when she was happy, the way Lily did. He wondered if she would be talented in Potions or Transfiguration (both, he decided). He would keep her away from the Dark Arts - he imagined that Lily would insist - but he liked to think she would possess enough intellectual curiosity to creep into his study in the middle of the night and pull the Dark Arts books off the shelf and flip through them, learning things here and there on her own. If he ever found out, he decided, he would scold her, but not too harshly. He wouldn't want her to actually  _stop_.

They would live in this house, he thought, and Lily would cook rib roast and Yorkshire pudding every year at Christmas, and he would show his daughter how to lay the silencing spell around her bedroom so as to block out the sound of the factory.

Severus stared at the ceiling as the shadows of his books cascaded across the bed and quietly understood that all his fantasies of the future were predicated on a world in which a Death Eater could, without consequence, have a child with Muggle-born shop girl working for the Opposition.

Such a world would be a better one. Severus knew that. But the Opposition's world had no place for Death Eaters, just as the Dark Lord's world had no place for Lily.

Severus realized he was knotting his bed sheet up in his fist, that his heart was pounding and his face was flushed. The books flapped harder, knocking up against each other, slamming into the walls.

So he conjured up his Occlumency. He didn't want to face his anger right now; he just wanted thoughts of his daughter opening presents beneath a Transfigured Christmas tree.

In that moment, his Dark Mark began to burn.

He sat straight up and the books all dropped out of the air, landing in dull, papery thumps on the floor and in the bed and in his lap. Severus lifted up his arm and stared at his Mark. It singed at the edges, limning red-orange around the skull and the serpent. Smoke drifted up in pale little bursts.

"Shit," Severus said.

He kicked off the books that had landed on his legs and stumbled out of his room, out of his house. He didn't bother to grab his cloak even thought the dreary winter cold still lingered, and he didn't give himself time to think about why the Dark Lord was calling him. He just Apparated.

The Dark Lord was no longer staying at Malfoy Manor - he'd moved on to an abandoned mill house one of the Mulcibers had procured and protected for him. When Severus came out of his Apparition he was standing beside a hard grey river that reminded him of the one that ran past his house. The mill house was built of thatch and stone and rotting into pieces. The windows shone green, even in the sunlight. It was a step down from Dankworth Manor, for certain: but when the Dark Lord managed that twin victory of infiltrating the Ministry entirely and Hogwarts at all, Severus knew that he would live wherever the fuck he wanted.

It hadn't happened yet. But it would happen soon.

Severus banged on the mill house door until Violetta Plume pulled it open, her face drawn tight and pinched. "He's waiting for you," she said.

"You should fix the wards," Severus said, sneering. "I want to Apparate to the Dark Lord's side, not his front fucking yard."

Violetta gave him a dark look. "Language, Mr. Snape."

Severus pushed past her and stomped into the hallway, Occlumency splitting him in two. Behind the wall was a thrum of terror - in the Dark Lord's personal spaces, those Marked servants could always Apparate through the wards. Something was wrong.

In front of the wall there was loyalty and nothing else. Severus made sure of that.

The mill house was small, and Severus found the Dark Lord sitting in the big empty space of the mill room, weak sunlight filtering through the cracks in the walls and the holes in the ceiling. He was alone.

Part of Severus had expected to see Bellatrix by his side, like a queen.

"Severus," the Dark Lord said. "I hear you have a new curse for me."

Severus did not let down his guard.

"Yes, my lord." He bowed. "It's not a killing curse, but it will incapacitate your enemies all the same."

The Dark Lord smiled, his face breaking in half. "I do love the sound of that.  _Incapacitate my enemies_. Yes, yes. Beautiful words."

Severus didn't know what to say, so he said nothing.

"And how does it incapacitate them, Severus?"

"It transforms their happiness into despair."

The Dark Lord's eyes widened. "Is it permanent?"

"Of course, my lord."

"Ah, you've found a way to make torture more efficient. Quite brilliant, really."

"Thank you, my lord."

The Dark Lord leaned back in his chair, threaded his fingers together. "I spoke with Bellatrix earlier today."

The shields trembled and strengthened, and Severus did not move.

"She told me some - interesting things. Look at me, Severus."

That last part, that command, that was not something Severus should have heard, not since being Marked. To command him to look, in that voice like breaking glass, was a test given to new recruits, to see how they reacted to having the Dark Lord slipping unhindered into their minds. It was a intimidation tactic.

Severus looked without hesitation.

The Dark Lord flooded into him, cold and dark as Arctic winds. He delved as deeply as he did the first time, that summer after Severus graduated Hogwarts. Severus hadn't Occluded then. He'd given the Dark Lord everything about himself - his father screaming and drunk, Potter and Black tormenting him all through school, even Lily, the only time he'd ever let him see her. It was an act of submission, an act of trust.

Severus Occluded now.

The Dark Lord bumped up against his shields but didn't see them for what they were - where Severus had built walls inside his mind the Dark Lord found only strains of loyalty and devotion. He smiled as he trailed over them, his teeth bright in the firelight. Then he pulled back and found Severus's altered memory of the day with Bellatrix and Lucius and Amos Crocker. Severus had crafted the memory the night he learned about the baby, heightening Bellatrix's mania so that he would seem reasonable and rational in comparison. He dissected away all his emotional turmoil, of course, though he kept in him some of his irritation with Bellatrix for verisimilitude. He took out what happened when she tried to look inside his head.

The Dark Lord pulled out, and Severus stood there swaying, his thoughts frosted over.

"Your stories don't line up," the Dark Lord.

"That not surprising," Severus said. "Bellatrix and I do not - I hope you don't mind me saying this, my lord, but I don't wish to be dishonest with you -"

The Dark Lord stared at him, snake eyes and crocodile teeth. "Go on."

"We don't  _like_ each other, my lord. I have a great respect for her - devotion to the cause, and the work she has done for you. She's a brilliant witch. But on a personal level -"

The skin around the Dark Lord mouth's tightened in a way that suggested a smile. "You are quite different, aren't you? You're so  _calm,_ Severus. Bella does not understanding calmness. It unsettles her, I think. The only thing that does."

"Well, my lord, it's a simple clash of styles."

The ghost-smile disappeared. "Ah, but that is the problem, Severus. You are comrades. Your styles should not conflict, they should complement each other." The Dark Lord pulled out his wand and waved it in a lazy, glowing spiral.

Severus did not react.

"You must work on that, Severus," the Dark Lord said. "Work on uniting your calmness with Bellatrix's ardor. You must be the eye to her hurricane."

The door slammed open, and a pair of Death Eaters, masked and unMarked, stomped into the room, dragging between them a wizard beaten and bloody and pale. He moaned when he saw the Dark Lord, and his eyes went wide with fear, and the struggled weakly against the Death Eaters' grips.

"Drop that there," the Dark Lord said, gesturing with his wand to an empty place in the floor, near Severus. "And leave us."

The two Death Eaters bowed and scuttled out of the room.

"Bellatrix shared it with me," the Dark Lord said. "What it was like, casting your curse. But I still think I would like to see it myself."

A shield cracked, repaired itself.

"See it, my lord?" Severus asked.

The Dark Lord fixed his gaze on him, coldness seeping in at the boundaries of Severus's thoughts. A warning. "Yes," he said. "I would like to _see_ it." He pointed to the man panting on the floor. "Do you know who this is?"

"No, my lord."

"A Ministry man." The man lifted his head and said something, but his words were so garbled and broken Severus couldn't understand him. "His name is not important, but his rank - " A pause the length of a heartbeat. "He stood between me and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. I offered him a place amongst my followers, in exchange for our advancement in his department, but he said no."

"Some people do not understand the depths of their mistakes, my lord," said Severus.

The Dark Lord fixed Severus with one of his shining, cruel smiles. "It makes me so glad to hear you say that. The things Bellatrix said, the things she showed me - well, they left me disturbed. Deeply so."

Severus didn't dare move.

"Show me your spell," the Dark Lord. "I want to see you cast it. An artist should take pride in his work."

Fissures spread through Severus's Occlumency: doubt and guilt and horror. Lily.

"Nothing would make me happier," Severus said. "I'm proud of this curse. It was - difficult to develop."

Another sharp smile.

"But this man, my lord, he's - he's already broken down." The wizard thumped against the floor, moaning and whimpering.

"Are you saying the curse won't work on him?"

"No, of course not, my lord. Merely that the effect will not be so - dazzling - as it would be, on a man not yet broken." There would be no such prisoners in the mill house, Severus knew. If he could cast the spell on an unMarked Death Eater, perhaps there would be less disgust struggling to break through his Occlumency.

The Dark Lord slid further into his mind, and Severus fought to reseal those cracks in his shields. His daughter, he had to protect his daughter -

"If the curse will work," the Dark Lord said, his voice flattening out into a low and dangerous whisper, "then you will cast it on that man."

He had to protect his daughter.

"Of course, my lord," Severus said, and he opened up the channels of his mind, just enough to nudge the Dark Lord forward, to see what he wanted to see -

The Dark Lord nodded, granting permission for Severus to break the connection. Severus turned to the man from the Ministry of Magic.

The man opened his mouth to speak. Blood trickled out instead.

" _Desperio_."

It was the same as Crocker. The man went stricken, and then tears rolled out of his eyes, fat and silent. He curled into his knees up against his stomach and lay on his side. His face glimmered in the room's green light.

"Cast a bludgeoning spell," the Dark Lord said. "Something painful."

Severus knew that if he hesitated, the consequences would be as terrible as if he had protested. And so he cast the spell, and the man slammed backwards against the floor. He didn't react otherwise, just kept weeping.

"My," said the Dark Lord. "That  _is_ impressive."

The shields grew thicker and darker, calcifying around his pain. "Thank you, my lord."

"And he'll stay like that forever? Simply sobbing like a child?"

Severus nodded.

"Regardless of what we do to him?"

The shields had blocked out everything. The inside of Severus was a black hole.

"Regardless, my lord."

"I'd like to see." The Dark Lord dipped into Severus's mind again, drifted through like a ghost. There was nothing for him to find but feigned loyalty - feigned loyalty that he must have accepted as true, because he pulled back with a smile. "Cast one of your killing curses on him, Severus."

"Do you have a preference as to which one, my lord?"

"A preference? Oh, I don't think - actually, you know, I'm rather fond of the Atra Dolor."

The shields shuddered.

"I find it elegant. Rather like this one, in truth -" The Dark Lord nodded at the man weeping on the floor. "It's painful, yes?"

"Very much so."

"Yes, I always associate that one with  _screaming_. It would be interesting to see how it reacts with the Desperio, don't you think?"

_No_.

The word flashed unbidden in his thoughts, bright as starlight amidst the darkness. He forced it back, grateful to all the magic in the world that the Dark Lord had not been inside his head when he thought it.

"Yes, my lord," Severus said. "It would be an interesting experiment."

The Dark Lord smiled. "Well, go ahead, then. It's such a joy to see your work, Severus."

Severus smiled, a small hard cold smile. "Thank you, my lord."

He turned to the man from the Ministry of Magic. The man looked up at him, his eyes shrouded by a veil of tears. There was no fear - the Desperio curse buried it all beneath sorrow.

And somehow, that sorrow was worse.

" _Atra dolor_ ," Severus said.

The curse flared out of wand and struck the man in the chest, in the heart, and Severus knew that it was spreading through his veins, turning his body into mold and rot.

The man didn't scream, just cried harder, staring at Severus with all that sorrow.

Severus took a step back, the sound of his shoes echoing in the room. The Dark Lord was watching the man with bright eyes, his mouth curving up in a smile, two sharp incisors jutting over his lower lip.

The man's skin bruised. His veins turned greyish red beneath his skin. His fingers curled in against his palms. His body shriveled and shrunk.

He stopped crying.

He died.

The Dark Lord let out a choking sort of laugh, then threw his arms out and drew Severus against him in a cold embrace. Severus used to treasure those embraces, a year and a half ago.

"Doubt," the Dark Lord said, "can be a dangerous thing." He dropped his arms from Severus's side. Severus didn't move. "But it can also keep us safe."

"Of course, my lord."

"I will not apologize for doubting you. I hope you understand why."

"I do, my lord."

"Don't give me reason to doubt you again." The Dark Lord still stood close enough that Severus could smell the smoke-and-blood scent of him.

"Never, my lord." Severus met the Dark Lord's gaze and knew that the shields inside his head would keep  _them_ safe, for as long as he was alive. "You will never doubt me again."

* * *

That night, Severus dreamed.

He never dreamed anymore, because of the Occlumency, but after the strain of his meeting with the Dark Lord, the shields all broke down as soon as he slept, to repair themselves and give his mind time to heal.

The dreams slunk in like alley cats.

He dreamed that Lily had abandoned him not when he joined the Death Eaters but earlier, while they were still at Hogwarts. He dreamed of flashes of cruelty - Potter's and Black's and his own, jeers and taunts and slurs. Lily's cruelty was there too, her laughter breaking across his skin like jagged hunks of glass. He never quite caught what any of them said, but it didn't matter; the emotions drowned him anyway. Humiliation and shame. Betrayal and loneliness and despair. Certain cruel slurs. All rushing in like the ocean, filling up his lungs until the world went black.

In another dream, Lily was marrying Potter in a wedding by a lake. The sunlight was so bright it hurt. White flowers drifted through the air like snow. When Severus ran down to the aisle to stop her, he realized he was barefoot, and the grass underneath was really broken green-glass bottles, and he trailed blood and pain up to the altar, begging her to stop, to stop, to stop, but she only looked straight through him as she cast the Avada Kedavra at his heart.

In the third dream, Potter was a child again, and Severus-the-adult was caring for him at Hogwarts, because he was in some great and unknowable danger. The shadows turned into monsters and Severus beat them back with charms and curses. Death Eaters crept in like roaches and he crushed them beneath the weight of enchantment. And Potter never thanked him, only hissed  _Snivellus_  and laughed. And when Severus looked at him he saw his eyes were green, and he wondered if they'd always been green and he hadn't noticed, and he thought how much like Lily's they were, that bright green, like the glass of soda bottles or antique windows. And then somehow he knew Lily was dead, and this was all that remained of her, this tiny James Potter with his green eyes.

In that dream, Severus walked to the Shrieking Shack, following the path he had taken that terrifying night in his fifth year. But this time there was no werewolf waiting for him, only a snake, the biggest snake Severus had ever seen, and he walked into the shack and allowed himself to be filled with poison.

That was when Severus finally woke. His face and pillow were wet with tears. He shuddered with the insistence that Lily had died, and so he immediately cast the tracking spell and found her, resting in her flat, glowing and bright and  _alive_.

Severus slumped down in his bed. His heart was still racing, the dreams still clung to the outer reaches of his mind: hesitantly, he drew up some simple shields, enough to banish the dreams into darkness. They worked, but his energy dragged. Normally, he could hold a spell like that without even trying.

He wasn't going back to sleep. He wasn't going back to a lot of things. For weeks he had known this, but tonight he knew for certain.

_I'll keep you safe. I'll keep the baby safe._

Severus crawled out of bed and fumbled around on the table for his wand. He cast a simple message spell, wrapping it in layers of protective Dark Magic. It was for Lily.

_I need to see you_ , it said.  _I need to come to your flat_ now.

He sent it without hesitation.


	31. Lily

Lily woke to a faint, distant chiming. At first she thought it was part of her dream, which, thanks to Sev's potion, involved a great golden wheat field and a hippogryff and the wind in her hair. But then the dream became nothing but the chiming, and when Lily opened her eyes she still heard it.

A message from Sev. A ring of fire around her heart, a black box sitting at the foot of her bed. Lily set the box in her lap. It was warm, like metal left out in the sun. She grabbed her wand off the bedside table and tapped it against the side of the box.

_I need to see you. I need to come to your flat now_.

Lily frowned, still feeling blurred around the edges. The message played again, Sev's voice hoarse and urgent. Her heart started to pound. Something was wrong. He never came to her flat. His house was safer, he said. What if he was in danger? What if You-Know-Who had somehow found out -

She could take him to an Order safehouse, if it came to that.

Lily sent a response - she didn't bother with an actual message, just sent an affirmation that she was awake. Then she pulled a coat over her nightgown and slipped on some old trainers and went down to the back alley with a Muggle flashlight to wait for him.

She had no idea how late it was, but the street had that silent darkness of early mornings that made you feel like the last person left in the world. She stood next to the spare rubbish bins and shivered in her coat. Her bare legs prickled with goosebumps. After a minute or two, she pulled out her wand. Just in case.

She only had to wait about five minutes. He Apparated a few feet away from her, appearing in a swirl of inky shadows. She caught the scent of anti-tracking magic, smoky and crackling, and the air took on that emptied-out quality that she associated with the Dark Arts.

"What's wrong?" she asked, rushing over to him. HIs face was twisted up with fear and something like sorrow - she'd never seen so much emotion in his features, not since Hogwarts. "What aren't you -"

"Lily." He grabbed her and pulled her close, pressing his nose against her neck. "I thought you were dead."

"What? Why would you -"

"I had a dream." He kissed her, on the mouth, on the cheek, on the forehead. All over. "You married James Potter and then you died." She let out a squawk of protest -  _you woke me up because you dreamed I married James fucking Potter -_ but he kissed her before she could say anything further, deep and slow, and Lily knew something really was wrong, and it had nothing to do with dreams.

"We need to get inside," Sev said. He threaded his fingers in hers and tugged, pulling her toward the building's door. "Hurry."

"Is someone following you?"

"I doubt it."

"Then why -"

"I don't want to linger in public." They came to the front door and Sev used magic to open the lock.

Lily scowled at him. "That wasn't strictly necessary. I have the key."

"It was faster."

Once they were inside, once the door had clicked shut behind them, some of Sev's tension eased out of his body. He let Lily undo the locks on her own door.

"Give me a second," Sev said. "Your wards aren't strong enough."

Lily dropped the flashlight on the couch and crossed her arms over her chest, watching him cast protective spells around the perimeter of her flat. The first spell he cast was Dark.

"Sev," she said, making her voice forceful. "What the hell is going on?"

He didn't answer, just kept chanting in that mournful Dark language, pale light streaking out of his wand and knotting itself around her flat.

"Sev!"

No response.

She sighed and stalked over to the kitchenette. She was shivering from the cold and from Sev's fear, and thus required something warm to drink. When she set the water to boiling, she made sure there was enough for Sev, too, even though he was so caught up in creating wards she didn't bother to ask him.

Sev cast a pair of regular protective spells, one of which Lily vaguely recalled learning at Hogwarts, on top of the Dark spell. Her flat twinkled with all that magic.

The tea kettle whistled and steamed.

Sev dropped onto the couch, nestling up against the armrest. Lily brought him a cup of tea and sat down beside him. He didn't move, just stared at his cup. His face was more drawn than usual.

"Sev," Lily said softly. "Tell me what's wrong."

He looked at her, and for a moment she saw a flash of the little boy from Spinner's End, vulnerable and afraid and alone in the world, and she knew she owed her bravery to him, after all those times he comforted her in the wake of witnessing horror.

It was like Hogwarts again. She would be his protector. It didn't matter how scared she was: of You-Know-Who, of the loss of her baby. Not right now.

"Sev -" She set her tea on the table and pressed one hand against the side of his face. "Let me help you."

"You can't," he said, voice hard and cold but not empty, not Occluded.

Lily took the tea out of his hands - they were trembling, she realized with a start - and set it next to her own cup. Then she drew his head against her chest. He let her. She wrapped her arms around him and held him there, and she could feel his entire body vibrating, as if he'd been pulsed with electrical energy.

"Tell me what happened," she whispered into his hair.

He didn't answer. She didn't expect him to, and she didn't push any farther. She held him and he allowed himself to be held.

After awhile, the trembling faded, and he shifted in her arms, turning to face her. She brushed her lips across the tip of his nose.

"I can't," he said. "I can't be a Death Eater anymore."

Lily couldn't move. She couldn't speak. She realized she had been waiting for him to say those words ever since he turned away from her on the street of her parent's house, during that terrible white-hot summer.

"But if I try to leave," he said. "They'll kill me."

"Sev -"

"I want you to take me to Dumbledore."

Lily's entire body turned to ice.

"No," she said. "No, Sev, you can't."

"It's the only way." The unnerving coldness was still in his voice. It made him sound as if he had given up all hope.

"I won't." She shook her head. "I won't. I won't." Tears filled up her eyes. "Do you know what happened to the last one?"

"Yes," said Severus.

The tears spilled, then, hot and desperate, and Lily pressed herself close to Sev, as close as she could, wishing she could draw him inside her and keep him there, safe, until the war was over.

"It's for you," he said, his voice strangled. "And our baby. Why the fuck can't you see that?"

"But you'll die!" Lily shrieked. It sounded stupid to her, childish, but she didn't care. "And you'll be  _really_ dead, it won't just be pretend - you saw, remember, when you looked inside my head - all last year I pretended you were dead." She rubbed at her eyes. "I don't want to go through that for real."

Sev cupped her face in his hand and tilted her gaze up to his. His eyes were black and glittering and strange, eerie and infinite as the night sky. "I won't die," he said. "If I leave, I'll die. That's what they do to defectors. If I - if I do this, I won't. I can keep secrets from him. I've been doing it since before - since before you. Before all this."

He dropped his hand down to her stomach. When he touched her, stretching his fingers out wide over her belly button, Lily choked back a sob. "I never wanted this for you," she said. "Never. Not even when Albus asked me to - to convince you."

"I know," he said. "I've seen it." And he tapped the side of her head with one finger. He smiled, although it was a weak smile, frightened. "Take me to Dumbledore. Not because I give a shit about the Opposition, or because Dumbledore wants it." He wiped away one of her tears with her thumb. "I can't help create a world that would see you destroyed. And this is the only way."


	32. Lily

Albus agreed to meet them at an Order safe house in a suburb of Bristol. Lily had never been there before, and she cast a memory charm to ensure she didn't forget the Apparition spell that would take her to the safe house front door. When the scroll disintegrated after she'd finished reading, the breeze from the open window sent the ashes scattering across Sev as he lay in her bed, watching. For a few seconds, his skin sparkled.

"Well, now I know the Opposition's stance on cleanliness," he said, wiping at the ashes. "I can't decide if I'm surprised or not."

"It's not the Opposition anymore." She smiled. "You have to call at the Order now."

Sev looked at her. He was Occluding again. "Old habits," he said.

They Apparated together, Lily's arm linked with Sev's, her head on his shoulder, his nose pressed against the part in her hair. The street where they landed reminded Lily of the street where she had grown up: it had a depressing sameness about it, especially now, in the last days of winter, before the gardens had a chance to grow and dissolve away all that conformity.

Even the safe house looked the same as all the other houses. Lily supposed that was why it was so safe.

She rang the doorbell, leaning into it with her weight. She clutched Sev's hand, not wanting to sever their connection.

The door swung open.

"Albus," Lily said. "Thank you. I know it's short notice -"

"Of course, my dear. You know I'm always available to speak with you." He glanced at Sev, his expression unchanging. Sev shifted his weight, tightened his grip on Lily's hand.

"Severus," Albus said. "It's wonderful to see you again."

Sev scowled, gave a little grunt of acknowledgment.

"Come in, come in," Albus said. "I'm afraid I don't have much to offer you in the way of breakfast."

"I'm not hungry," Lily said. "It's fine." She didn't know if she'd ever feel hungry again, considering the way her stomach kept twisting and roiling around.  _Maybe Albus will know another way, maybe Sev won't have to do this_.

"I can offer you tea," Albus said.

"We don't want tea," Sev snapped. "Could we just get to it? Would that be too much trouble?" He stomped into the house, robes swirling. He did not let go of Lily's hand.

Albus smiled wanly after him. "Of course, Severus. You're right. Let's have our talk."

Sev scowled again.

The house was empty, filled only with dust and early morning sunlight. Lily's shoes sank into the carpet. Albus led them into a back room, and here, at least, there was a bed, some chairs.

"Please," Albus said. "Sit."

At first, Sev didn't move. He was gripping Lily's hand so tightly that her knuckles ached. She rested her free hand on his shoulder, leaned against him. She thought of things to say, but they were all the wrong things, and so she stayed quiet.

Albus watched them from the hallway. He didn't say anything, either.

"You're all so bloody  _polite_ ," Sev said, a few seconds later.

"An example of the differences in our ideologies," Albus said.

Sev snorted. But then he stepped into the room and sat down. So did Lily. Their linked hands dangled between their two chairs, and when Albus sat down on the edge of the bed, Lily saw how his eyes took in their hands. She couldn't read his expression.

Albus pulled out his wand and cast the silencing spell. Lily watched Sev's face as the silvery-blue enchantment crawled up the room's walls. Lines had formed between his eyebrows, but otherwise he was blank, empty, Occluded.

Albus looked at Sev expectantly.

"You know why I'm here," Sev said.

"Do I?"

"Well, you sent Lily into a Death Eater trap for it. I would certainly fucking hope so."

Albus didn't react.

"I'd like to think you didn't risk her life for nothing," Sev added. Lily looked down at her lap, remembering. She wondered, now that she possessed the enchantment of hindsight, if that was when she first knew that he loved her.

"Is that why you asked to come speak with me?" Albus asked. "Because you didn't want to feel as if her efforts were wasted?"

"No," said Sev, and he slipped his hand out of Lily's and pushed his fingers through his hair. "I came to make a deal."

"What?" said Lily.

Sev didn't look at her. He leaned forward, his gaze focused and intense, all of it bearing in on Albus. "She's pregnant," Sev said.

"Yes, I am aware of that."

"You need to hide her."

Lily suddenly felt as if she were floating, like she'd somehow become detached from the world.  _Hide her_?

What the hell was Sev doing?

Albus raised an eyebrow. "I'm afraid it's not our practice to hide operatives just because they get pregnant." He chuckled. "We'd hardly have anyone left, the right things have been going lately."

Sev glared at him, his eyes full of poison. "You'll hide her," he said, and his voice was low and steady and - frightening. The sort of voice you used to intimidate. It was not a voice he had ever used on her. "You'll hide her not because of the mother but because of the father."

"Oh?" said Albus. "Do you know the father? I'm afraid she wouldn't tell me."

Sev's glare deepened. "The father will spy for you. But only if you hide her."

Albus settled back in his chair and stroked his beard. Sev turned to Lily, his glower still fixed in place, and said, "I told you I would protect you."

"Yes," said Albus. "I suppose we should stop talking about the young lady in question as if she weren't here."

That earned Albus another of Sev's dark looks, but in truth Lily appreciated it.

"What do you say of all this?" Albus asked her. "You seem rather surprised at the notion."

"This isn't up for debate," Sev said, but Lily put her hand on his arm.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked.

"I did," Sev said. "If I want to protect you I have to send you away. I can't hide you, I don't have the magic for it. I  _know_ the Opposition does."

"The Order," Lily said quietly.

"Yes, the Order." Sev sighed. "It's one of the Dark Lord's banes, honestly, the way your lot can just send someone off into the ether. We haven't been able to unravel the magic around it." He curled up his lip and glanced at Albus. "There, if you doubted me. First piece of intelligence."

"Thank you," Albus said, all prim and proper as if Sev had given him a late Christmas gift.

"But why - where would I  _go_?" Lily asked. "Would I be able to see - my mum - my sister - anyone?" She blinked. "Would I be able to see you?"

"Absolutely not," Sev said. "Not me, at any rate. I don't know about the others. Although why you would want to see that sister of yours - " His voice trailed off, and he looked at Albus expectantly.

"Within reason," Albus said. "If I were to agree to the - the arrangement, I would send you to a magical enclave and cast a charm of concealment around you and your child. You could come and go on occasion. To visit you mother, for example. I agree with Severus, however, it would be - dangerous - for you to go to him."

"Is it dangerous for me to stay?" Lily asked, looking at Albus. She knew Sev's opinion on the subject. "Even if we don't see each other?"

Albus stared at her for a few seconds. "If Severus agrees to work for me," he said, slowly, like he was thinking about each word before he spoke it, "he would be putting himself at enormous risk. As you know. But it is unlikely that Voldemort would merely  _execute_ him if he discovered his betrayal -"

"He would burrow into my mind until he found you," Sev said, flat and emotionless. "What happens then would depend on his mood, but at best we can assume he'll Imperio me to murder you." Sev's eyes glimmered for a moment. "And our baby."

"Then don't do it!" Lily shrieked. She turned to Albus. "Hide him, too! Find someone else to be your fucking spy!"

"There is no one else," said Albus.

"He's right," said Sev.

Lily suddenly felt empty, deflated. "What?"

"There's no one else," said Sev. "I've been Occluding against the Dark Lord since I completed my first assignment for him. I've been creating false memories for the past few months. And two days ago I lied well enough that I was able to convince him that he had no reason to doubt me." Sev smiled, cruel and hard. "Obviously, he does."

Lily stared at him. Even Albus seemed momentarily shaken.

"He doubted you?" Albus asked.

Sev turned to him, glaring again. "Yes," he said. "I didn't take giddy enough delight in murdering some poor wizard Rodolphus Lestrange had kidnapped, so that branded me an unstable element." He sneered. "Does that surprise you, Dumbledore? That I don't enjoy killing?"

"Not particularly," Albus said.

Lily was still struck silent. She was not an Occlumens - far from it - but what Sev had described sounded to her like impossible magic. But as she dwelt on it, she wondered how many of those false memories, those lies, that impossible magic, was because of her? How many times had she lied about  _him_  - to Dumbledore, to Remus, to the others in the Order?

You Know Who was one of the greatest Legilimens who ever lived. Albus had told her that. And yet Sev had kept his love for her a secret - not just for the last few months, she understood, but for the last year and a half. He had always kept her safe from him, his dark lord, his master.

She knew this as surely as she knew she loved him.

She reached over and pressed her hand against his face, and he turned to her, his eyes full of anger and striated with fear. Those two emotions were one and the same with him.

"Are you really doing this for me?" she asked.

"Everything I do is for you," Sev said, half-snarling. "And for her, now." He looked at Lily's belly, and she lay her hand against it, wondering if the baby could feel her sorrow.

"Do you agree to the conditions?" Albus asked.

Lily looked at him. His face was serious but his kind, his blue eyes sparkling like melting ice.

"Where will you hide me?" she asked.

"Don't you fucking say it front of me," Sev said.

"It won't matter," Albus said. "Once the spell's been cast."

"Don't do it."

Lily bowed her head, tears forming on her lashline. She felt as if she were being ripped in two.

"Lily," Albus said, in his gentle headmasterly voice, "Do you remember what I told you in October?"

She looked at him. The room blurred with tears.

"Do you remember what I said about the war being as good as lost?"

She did remember, and she nodded once. A tear streaked down her cheek. She pressed her hands against her stomach, wishing she could hold her baby.

"It's still true," Albus said. "But with Severus - things could be different."

Sev didn't say anything, didn't scoff or roll his eyes. He just sat there steeping in his anger-that-was-really-fear. He had told her he would keep her safe, he would keep the baby safe. He said he could not create a world that would destroy her.

And maybe this really was the only way to do it.

"All right," Lily said, voice and hands shaking. "I agree."

Sev took her hand again, and squeezed it tight.


	33. Lily

Lily spent the rest of the day at Sev's house. She called in to work, feigning a cold, and for the entire afternoon they lay tangled up in Sev's bed. Lily wanted to memorize every line of his body, every imperfection, every movement of muscle and bone. She wanted to memorize the way he kissed and the way his fingers trailed up and down her spine whenever she lay on top of him. They hardly spoke for the entire afternoon. There were no words to say, and Lily was afraid that if she spoke, she would start crying.

So it was just their bodies and their breath and the beat of their hearts.

She spent the night, her sleep distracted and fitful despite his potion and the fact that he kept one arm stretched across her waist as he slept. Every time she shuddered awake, he would kiss her back to sleep, murmuring soft and unintelligible against her ear.

When she woke up the next morning, Albus's Patronus sat beside the bed, watching her. It glimmered in the sunlight streaming in through the grimy windows, looking bright and out-of-place in Sev's house.

"Albus?" she asked, pulling the blankets up to her neck. Sev wasn't in the room; she could hear the patter of his footsteps from elsewhere in the house.

_I'm sorry to impose on you like this_ , the Patronus said _, but we must move quickly. I'm sure Severus would insist._

Lily nodded, remembering the desperation of yesterday afternoon. Sadness welled up behind her eyes, but she didn't cry. She was brave.

_You and I must meet sometime today, as soon as possible, to discuss the arrangements._

"Oh," Lily said. "Of course."

_Headquarters would be safest. As soon as you are able_. The Phoenix turned its head a little, and its eyes glittered.  _Hello, Severus_.

Lily twisted around on the bed. Sev was standing in the doorway, holding a plate of toast and jam and a coffee mug.

"Dumbledore?" he said, wrinkling his brow.

_Yes, Severus. We use our Patronuses as more than an offense against the Dark Arts._ The phoenix lifted into the air, white wings flashing in the sun.

Sev didn't say anything. He already knew what they used their Patronuses for; Lily had told him. She had told him everything, and he never once related the information to You Know Who, just as she had never told Albus any of his Death Eater secrets.

_Can you cast the Patronus charm_? the phoenix asked.

Sev sneered. "I'm sure I could if I  _tried_."

_It's not as simple as it seems_.  _But no matter, we can teach you._  The phoenix turned back to Lily.  _As soon as you are able, my dear_. And then it flapped its wings and dissolved into sparkles of enchantment.

Sev set the plate and mug on the table and sat beside Lily on the bed. She leaned over and kissed him, letting the blankets fall away from her naked body, and for a few moments that's all the world was, that kiss.

Lily pulled away and rested her head on his chest.

"He wants me to make the arrangements for my - for me to leave," she said

"I know. I heard."

Lily buried her nose in his robes so she could breathe in the scent of him. "I don't want to."

"Well, you have to." His voice was sharp. Lily kissed him again.

"I know. I'm just alerting you to the fact."

Something in his eyes softened, and he ran his fingers over her cheekbone, over her nose, over her lips. "The world deserves to have you in it," he said.

"And our baby."

"Our baby." He rested his forehead against hers, his eyes closed. "Yes."

"We should give her a name."

His eyes opened, centimeters from hers. His hair fell around their faces like a curtain.

"Babies generally have names," she said.

They pulled apart, and Sev rubbed his hands over Lily's bare shoulders.

"You want to do this together," he said, as if it were a revelation.

"How else would we do it?" Lily asked. "So what do you think? Are you obligated to give her a family name?"

Sev wrinkled his nose. "I'm not  _obligated_ to do anything. And we are not naming my child after my mother."

Lily forced herself not to smile too brightly. She had never liked Sev's mother, who seemed so distant and uncaring whenever she saw her at the train station. She wasn't even sure she knew her first name, now that she thought on it.

"What about your mother?" he asked.

"Beulah?" Lily said.

"Oh God, was that your mother's name?"

"I'm afraid so."

"We're not naming her that." Sev lay his head against hers and dropped his hand down to her stomach, his touch gentle and warm. "It sounds like a species of sea mammal."

Lily laughed. "My father was named Harold."

"And I see you've already forgotten the sex of your own child."

Lily swatted at him. "Harold - Harriet."

Sev didn't answer immediately, just stroked her belly.

"Well?" she asked.

"Harriet," he said. "I suppose it's normal enough. It sounds good with Evans."

"It sounds better with Snape," Lily whispered. Sev's hand stopped moving.

"You shouldn't do that," he said.

"We'll be in hiding," Lily said. "It won't matter."

"After the war -"

"If we lose, it  _still_ won't matter."

"I was referring more to if we win."

"What? What do you mean?" Lily asked, although her heart had swelled when he said  _we._

"It's bad enough that she might look like me. Having to bear a Death Eater's name isn't going to -"

"You aren't a Death Eater."

Sev didn't answer.

"You aren't." Lily put her hands on his face and made him look at her. He was Occluding, she could tell, but she looked him straight in the eye. "You aren't a Death Eater anymore."

"Technically, I -"

"Technically nothing. You  _aren't_ , and our baby has parts of both of us. So she'll have my father's first name and your last name and that's all there is to it." Lily's voice wavered. "And maybe someday I'll have your name too."

The Occlumency washed out of Sev's features, leaving in its wake a faint impression of surprise.

"When the war's over," Lily added.

Sev closed his eyes, and now there was a happiness evident there, melting into his natural scowl. Lily had learned to recognize his happiness even if no one else could. She kissed him again, and he kissed back, fierce and true, his hands tangling up in her hair. He pulled her down to the bed, and Lily undressed him, covering his face with kisses, because here was one more chance to memorize the man she loved.

She knew the future she wanted, but she didn't trust the world to give it to her. There was a chance she would have to spend the rest of her life with memories. She wanted as many as possible.


	34. Lily

In the sitting room of Order Headquarters, Albus laid out the plan for Lily's exile.

"We recently acquired a new safe house in Ireland," he said. "We placed a healer there - she's also a trained midwife, which given your condition I thought important - but she has no interest in the actual  _running_ of the house."

"Ireland?" Lily asked.

"Yes, dear, it's just a portkey whirl away. And you'll be in charge of the portkeys, of course, since you'll be in charge of maintaining the house."

Lily blinked. "You want me to run a safe house?"

"Of course. Is that a problem?"

"No. Not at all." Lily liked the idea, actually - it meant her going into hiding could benefit others, not just herself and Harriet and Sev. "I don't know if I'll be that  _good_ at it, but I can try."

Albus's eyes twinkled. "Why would you say that?"

Lily shrugged. "I spent the last year and a half working in a robe shop."

"And you spent seven years before that as one of the most talented and, more importantly, well-loved students at Hogwarts. Don't underestimate kindness as a employment skill."

Lily didn't have anything to say to that. She never thought she was well-loved, truly, by anyone at Hogwarts.  _Except Sev._

"Adelia Prince - the healer there - she'll be happy to help you, I'm sure, with any problems that might arise. But I know you're clever enough to sort them out anyway." He gave her a kind, grandfatherly smile, which flickered and faded into seriousness. "We also need to discuss the matter of your Concealment Charm. Do you know how they work?"

Lily nodded.

"So you know you'll need someone to act as your Secret-Keeper."

Lily looked down at her hands. "Someone I trust."

"Yes."

And who did she trust, in all the world of magic? Although she'd had so many friends at school, she'd lost touch with them after graduating, partially because of Sev's joining the Death Eaters and partially because her school-girl friendships had only formed once it became clear that she would be Pretty and Smart, two qualities which, in tandem, led to popularity. For that reason, they had been as insubstantial as melting ice. She couldn't ask any of them now.

"I guess I can't ask Sev, can I?" It was a joke, but neither Lily nor Albus laughed.

"He wouldn't want to take the risk," Albus said. "He doesn't trust himself."

Lily studied Albus's face. "You trust him, though. You think he could."

"I know how the magic works," Albus said. "He can't betray you unless he wants to. And he'll never want to."

Lily wondered how Albus could know that about Sev. Of course it was  _true_ , but how could he  _know_? Lily only knew because every now and then he pulled back the veil of his Occlumency and allowed her to peer inside his heart.

She slumped down in her seat. Someone she could trust. Someone who wouldn't betray her. Someone who would be her friend for  _real_ -

"Remus," she said.

Albus blinked.

"Do you think he would do it?"

"I imagine so," said Albus. "But you'll want to ask him." He pulled out his wand and cast his Patronus, sent it flying up the chimney. "Would you like some tea while we wait?"

LIly shook her head numbly. Everything was happening so fast.

About twenty minutes later, the bell at the front door rang, reverberating through the rooms of the house.

"Ah," said Albus. "That should be Remus now." He stood up. "Excuse me, Lily, I'll go and fetch him."

Lily nodded and fiddled with her lock of white hair. The room's walls shimmered with Albus's silencing spell. The spell only worked one way, though: she heard voices approaching the door, low and muffled.

Albus held the door open, and Remus stepped in.

"Lily," he said. "How are you? I haven't seen you much lately. You haven't been coming to practice."

"No," Lily said, dropping her hands to her stomach without thinking. She looked at Albus, and he nodded at her, stepped back out into the hallway, and shut the door.

Remus looked over his shoulder, then back to Lily. He frowned. "Albus said you needed to ask me something -?" He strode across the room and sat down in the chair across from Lily, the one where Albus had sat as he laid out their plans. Remus's clothes seemed shabbier than usual, threadbare. Lily knew there was something about Remus, something that made it hard for him to find work - she'd overheard James and Sirius talking about it during practice a month or so ago, before she found out about the baby and stopped going. She wondered if he would ever tell her what that secret was. If they would ever be friends enough for it.

"Lily?" Remus asked, voice gentle, face full of concern.

"I'm pregnant," Lily said.

Remus furrowed his brow.

"That's why I stopped coming to practice. I can't fight -"  _Jesus, Lily, just spit it out._ "My baby's in danger from You-Know-Who."

Remus leaned forward, stuck out a hand and rested it on her arm. "Oh, Lily, I'm so sorry. Do you - I mean if you don't mind me asking - do you know why?" Then he turned pink and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, ignore me. Of course you know why. Please don't feel like you have to -"

"It's all right," Lily said, but then she hesitated. She thought about how Remus had told her that Sev was safe, that night of the battle at Dankworth Manor. "It's because of who the father is."

Remus stared at her for a long time, unblinking. Then he said,

"The father's not the reason you're scared."

_He knows_ , thought Lily.

"No," she said. "The father - I love him very much." Her voice cracked. "And he loves me. But the only way to keep my baby safe is to go into hiding. To put us under a Concealment Charm. While the father, while he - " She stopped herself in time. No one was to know about Sev, not even other Order members. Remus would figure it out, probably, but he hadn't told Sirius and James and Peter about what happened after Dankworth Manor. She doubted he would tell them about this, either.

"A Concealment Charm," said Remus. "Oh. That's why I'm here. You need a Secret-Keeper -"

"You said you hoped we could be friends. I can't ask - I can't ask the father, he can't do it, and I never really had any friends but - but Sev in school. And you're so kind, I thought -" She gave him a weak smile. "After the war is over, we should become proper friends, don't you think?"

"Yes, I'd like that." Remus smiled. "And I would be honored to be your Secret-Keeper."

"Oh, Remus, thank you so much." She breathed out her relief. "Thank you, thank you."

Remus stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets. "When do you leave?"

"I don't know. Soon." She stood up too, and for a moment they stared at each other, the silencing spell shimmering around them like ice.

"By the way," Remus said. "I know what's it like."

"What?"

"What's it's like to love someone you - someone people say you shouldn't." He shrugged, his hair falling across his forehead, but he kept his eyes on her. "I know how much it hurts, having to keep everything a secret."

Lily stared at him. "Yeah, it's not as much fun as you might think."

"I think you should love whoever you want," Remus said. "As long as he doesn't hurt you."

"He doesn't."

"I know." Remus smiled. "Even if no one else does, I do."

Lily's tears prickled at her lashes, turning the room crystalline and bright. "Thank you," she whispered, and then she was crying, small, polite little sniffles. Remus threw his arm around her shoulder, brotherly and comforting. It only took a few moments for her tears to dry up.

Someone knocked on the door.

Lily tensed, but it was Albus's voice that drifted into the room - "Might I join you?"

"Sure," called out Remus. He shook his head. "Oh. He can't hear me, can he?"

"No." Lily laughed. She used her wand to open the door.

"So. Has it been decided?" Albus asked, shutting the door behind him.

"I would be honored," Remus said. "And you didn't tell me we had  _another_ baby on the way."

Albus's eyes twinkled. "What wonderful news. Remus, you and I will begin making the preparations shortly."

"Another baby?" Lily asked.

Remus glanced at her. "Yeah, Alice Longbottom is pregnant, too. Didn't you hear?"

She shook her head. Strange, how even with all the danger in the world people kept on as if things were normal. They fell in love, they made babies. They got married. Back in October she couldn't even begin to imagine it. Now - now things were different.

"Lily," Albus said, "You'll need to tell Remus where you will be hiding."

"That's it?" Lily asked. "I just need to tell him?"

"Yes," said Albus. "He'll cast the charm once you leave."

"Oh. Do I have to - take out my wand or -"

"No." Albus smiled. "Just tell him."

Lily turned to Remus. This didn't feel like magic, but then, so many things that weren't magic felt as if they were. Sev kissing her in the mornings. Snow drifting across his front yard as they sat on his porch and drank bitter black coffee. Maybe these things went both ways.

"Remus Lupin," Lily said, because she thought she should at least be formal, "I will be living in a safe house near the wizarding village of Angua Beach. In Ireland."

"Ireland," Remus said. "I'll keep your secret safe."

He smiled at her, and Lily smiled back, and she felt a spark of enchantment, the clean, white sort of magic she was used to, not Dark, not Dim, just  _magic_ , flash between them.

"There," said Albus. "All done. Lily, I suggest you go home and begin your preparations for departure. Remus, we have some work ahead of us, I'm afraid."

"So soon?"

"Yes. This matter is rather, ah, time-sensitive."

Remus looked concerned, but before he could say anything, Albus held out one hand and said,

"No cause for worry just yet, Remus. But we shouldn't dawdle."

Remus turned to Lily. "Will you be all right?" he asked.

"I'll be fine," Lily said, and she was surprised by how brave she sounded. "I have - I have someone to help me. With the packing."

Remus smiled, but somehow he managed to make it look serious. "I'm glad to hear that," he said, and she knew that he was.


	35. Snape

Lily's flat looked as if some Death Eater had blasted his way through all her possessions, but Severus knew she had just been packing.

"It's hard," she said, after he'd stepped through the door and re-activated the protection spells he'd put up the night he defected. "I can only fit so many things in my trunk."

"Just like Hogwarts," Severus said. Her trunk sat in the middle of the living room, and it was in fact the same one she'd used all through school: he recognized the fading, glittery stickers she'd put on it sometime around her first or second year, the jerkily-moving picture of Slughorn some Gryffindor prat had painted on the side. Lily came up beside him and slipped her arm around his waist.

For a moment they stood there, watching the badly-rendered Slughorn flicker across the trunk.

"So what do you have to leave behind?" Severus asked, because if they were talking about  _this_ then he wouldn't have to think about everything else.

"Clothes, mostly. Party dresses and fancy robes. Stuff I won't need." She shrugged. "Plus all my dishes and pots and pans - I won't need those either. Albus said he'd put the stuff I can't take in storage down at Headquarters, but still." She paused for a moment, pressing her face into his shoulder. "Right now I'm sorting out photographs."

"Don't take any of me," Severus said automatically.

Lily pulled away, looking up at him. The expression on her face nearly broke his heart.

"I mean it," he said. "The last thing you need is for some double-agent to report back to the Dark Lord that an Oppo - Order member's got a stack of photographs of a Death Eater."

"I don't even own a stack of photographs of you. You never let anyone take your picture."

"It's not safe."

Lily scowled, then wordlessly flicked her wand. A cardboard box came careening out the bedroom. She caught it in midair and dragged Severus over to the couch.

"Fine," she said. "Then help me pick which ones to take."

The box was only about half-full, and most of the photographs were Muggle ones anyway, unnerving in their stillness. Severus recognized her parents, arms looped around each other, eyes squinting into the camera. There was one of her repugnant sister as a little girl, sitting on a swing in the playground by Lily's house. Some Muggles he didn't know.

Lily set aside any photograph she found of her parents.

The magical photographs were all shoved at the bottom of the box, and there weren't many: mostly shots of her Gryffindor pals, dressed up and sparkling for the Christmas feast. One of a fourth-year Lily in Quidditch robes, the wind rippling her hair. One of him, turning his head away from the camera, putting up his hand.

He snatched it away from her.

"Wouldn't want to take that one anyway," she said. "I can't even see you."

"Who would want to see me?"

She gave him a strange, haunted look. He'd meant it as a joke - his nose and hair and all. But she just blinked twice, eye shimmering, and said, "I don't want to forget what you look like."

He felt as if someone had blasted him. Her gaze lingered for a few seconds longer, and then she turned back to the photographs. "Here," she said. "This is the one I wanted to take."

"You can't -"

"Oh, shut up." She held the photograph up to the light. He saw himself, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, bony and scowling, pushing through the vines that hid the entrance to the clearing in the Forbidden Forest where they went when they wanted to smoke cigarettes and copy each other's homework. The light from the camera flashed, whiting out the image entirely - and then sixteen-year-old-him was glaring in surprise and annoyance, head shaking, lips moving.

Severus heard Lily's laughter inside his head. Her voice, ringing out through the woods:  _Caught you!_

"I remember when you took this," he said. "You'd been trying to take my pictures for weeks. I wanted to hex you on the spot."

Lily-in-the-present laughed and tucked the photograph into the pile with the pictures of her family. "I know. That picture is precious."

"You can't take it." He reached across her lap, but she slapped his hand away.

"One picture," she said, "is not going to arouse suspicion."

"You don't know that."

"I know you're far too paranoid."

"And you think I don't have reason to be? Don't be stupid."

"Only if you won't be a git." She slipped the lid back on the box, tossed the box to the floor, picked up her stack of pictures. He wanted to stop her. If anyone saw, if they questioned her - even other Opposit- (Order! It was the bloody Order to him now!) other Order members were a risk. No one except Dumbledore and Lily knew his status as a double agent. Severus himself had difficulty believing it: he never fancied himself that idiotically courageous.

But he didn't stop her when she tucked the photographs inside her trunk. The way she looked at him as she said that she didn't want to forget what he looked like - he simply couldn't bring himself to do it. Even if it did make him a sentimental fool.

Lily dropped back down on the couch beside him, slipping her hand up underneath his hair. He shivered at her touch, at her fingers against the back of his neck, and thought about how he wouldn't get to feel her touch for a long, long time. Maybe never. He hadn't been alone with Dumbledore long enough to ask what would become of him after the war - and even if he had, he wasn't sure he wanted to ask. He wasn't sure he wanted to  _know_.

The Dark Lord welcomed the Order's defectors, but he never trusted them completely, and Severus knew his plans for them after the Death Eaters' presumed victory was - less than pleasant. He had no reason to think the Order would be any different. Victors torture the conquered: Severus did not believe a hatred of the Dark Arts would be enough to curtail that particular fact of life. And he knew first hand the cruelty of the Other Side, long before he ever pledged his loyalty to the Dark Lord.

Lily kissed along his neck, pulling him out of his thoughts.  _She_ was the only thing that mattered. Lily and her baby, his baby, their baby. The Order would imprison and torture Death Eaters, if they won, but they wouldn't murder Muggle-borns.

And so he chose his side, for the second and final time.

"Sev," she whispered, and her voice was like a cool breeze in summer. "Sev, Albus'll be here soon."

"Then you should finish packing."

"I have." She nestled up close to him, her hand slipping inside his robes. "One more time? Before he gets here?"

Severus looked at her, at her flushed cheeks, her bright eyes, her tousled hair. She was going away. He knew it but he hadn't believed it. Not until now.  _One more time_.

_I don't want to forget what you look like_.

"Lily," he said, because he wanted to feel her name on his tongue. "Lily, I love you."

She smiled. It was the most beautiful smile he had ever seen. "I know."

"Don't forget it."

"I won't." She crawled onto his lap, straddling him at the hips. Put her hands against the side of his face. Looked into his eyes. An invitation.

He looked, and inside her thoughts he found sadness and love, as he expected. But also hope.

"Lily," he whispered, touching her face, letting that hope wash over him in waves. "Lily, I - you can't put so much faith in me -"

"Yes I can," she said, and kissed him.


	36. Snape

Dumbledore arrived an hour or so later, knocking politely at the door. Severus' wards rippled through the flat, stirring up clouds of dust and disrupting a stack of old Hogwarts essays Lily had left sitting next to her trunk.

She was picking at some reheated take-away Severus had picked up for her, and when the knocks came at the door she lay down her chopsticks and blinked.

"I imagine one of us has to answer it," Severus said. "Seeing as how it's your flat, my vote goes to you."

Lily sighed. "I don't want to."

Severus drummed his fingers against the table, trying to bite back his tongue. Of course she didn't want to! He didn't  _want_ her to. But neither of them had much choice in the matter.

A few seconds passed, and Lily waved her wand and the door slammed open.

Dumbledore stood in the doorway, hands folded in front of him. He sniffed the air and frowned.

"You shouldn't be using that sort of magic, Severus."

"I'll use whatever I need to keep the Dark Lord out of this flat."

For a few seconds, they stared at each other, unmoving. And then Albus stepped through the wards. The door swung shut behind him.

"You're trusting our spells to keep Lily hidden," Dumbledore said. Severus's chest tightened, and he curled his fingers around his wand. "Take down the Dark ward and I'll replace it with the same magic we use on our safe houses."

Severus gripped his wand so tightly his knuckles turned white. Lily wove her arm in his but he hardly felt her. He knew it would be like this. No more Dark magic, even if it was protective, even if it was keeping Lily safe.

Severus swung his wand once, muttered the Dark incantation to remove spells. All that magic went out of the room.

"Thank you, Severus."

Dumbledore's courtesy put his teeth on edge. But as Dumbledore wove new wards, Lily kissed him on the cheek and whispered, "I know you were protecting me. Thank you."

Her eyes were bright and sincere, and for a moment love surged up inside him, diluting the anger. She smiled, gave him another kiss, whispered another thank you.

When Albus finished with his spells, the flat smelled faintly of rosewater and metal, and the wall shone silvery-blue.

"Are you ready, my dear?" he asked Lily, and Severus heart twisted when she nodded yes.

Albus reached into his robe and pulled out a small metal stapler, olive-green paint chipping off in patches. He set the stapler on the table in front of the round window, next to Lily's unused ashtray and a half-empty pack of cigarettes.

"Just like that?" Severus asked. "You waltz in here, you hand her some Muggle rubbish, and she's gone?"

"This is what you asked for, Severus."

"I bloody know that!"

"I think what Sev is saying -" Lily stood up and smiled graciously, lighting up the whole room. "Could you give us a moment?"

Dumbledore studied her face, and for a few seconds Severus was certain he would say no. But he only nodded, and said, "I did rather need to use the loo."

He disappeared down the hallway.

Lily turned to Severus, grabbed his hands, pulled him to his feet. Tears were forming in the corners of her eyes. He hated the sight of them, almost as much as he hated the sight of that fucking stapler.

"Sev," Lily said, and then her hands were around his neck, her body was pressed up tight against his, soft and familiar. He ran his own hands down over her waist and the swell of her hips, and he kissed her, one last kiss, a kiss that erased all the kisses that had come before, it was so perfect, so true, so real.

When they pulled apart, Severus felt as if his heart had been cut out of his chest.

"I love you," Lily said. Behind her Dumbledore had stepped back into the room, but he kept his eyes cast down at the floor, avoiding them.

"I love you too," Severus said, and he hoped Dumbledore fucking heard it, and that he knew that he meant it. He kissed Lily again, and for a second he thought about the afternoon that he told her he joined the Death Eaters, how empty her eyes had been in the moments before he walked away. And here they were again, saying goodbye: but this time, her eyes weren't empty.

"I'll see you soon," she whispered, tears shining on her cheeks. She grabbed his hand and placed it on her stomach. "She'll see you soon."

"Yes. All of us. Soon." He didn't believe it. The world didn't work that way; the world gave him happiness in increments and then it jerked it out from under him. But he wouldn't tell her that. Not today. Not right now.

"Lily," Dumbledore said. "It's time."

She closed her eyes, pressed her forehead against Severus's. He breathed in her scent one last time, smoke and lavender.

When she pulled away that time, he felt the absence of her touch like a knife at his throat.

She picked up the handle of her trunk, tears streaming over her face, dropping in dark spots onto the fabric of her dress. Dumbledore put his hand on her shoulder and smiled in that infuriatingly kind way of his. Lily didn't look at him. She looked at Severus. Her bottom lip trembled.

"I'll see you soon," Severus said. His voice caught.

Lily nodded. She dragged her trunk across the room, never taking her eyes off of him. She fumbled around on the table, knocking her cigarettes to the floor.

"Bye," she said, as simply as if she were about to Apparate off to work. Tears stained her face.

Her fingers grazed the stapler.

For a half-second nothing happened. Then there was a sound like an earthquake and she and her trunk were sucked backwards into nothing, leaving in their wake a few sparkles of magic. Severus thought he smelled the ocean.

His ears buzzed.

"Severus," Dumbledore said. "You and I should talk -"

He ignored him. He strode over to the table and picked up the stapler. Nothing happened, of course: it only worked once, as a response to Lily's touch. Now it was just a stupid Muggle machine.

Severus hurled the stapler into the air, yanked out his wand, blasted the stapler into a thousand pieces.

Dumbledore watched and said nothing, the insufferable old fool.

Severus stooped down to pick up the fallen cigarettes. He lit one with his wand. He hadn't had a cigarette in years. Lily always liked them more than he did; they used to pass them back and forth in their clearing in the woods, and for so long Severus thought that was the closest he would ever come to kissing her.

The smoke burned his lungs. It didn't calm down his anger.

"Severus," Albus said.

"What? What the fuck do you want?"

"We need to talk."

"What is there to talk about?"

"Everything."

"Everything?" Severus sucked hard on the cigarette and laughed. "Everything. So what do you want me to do? What do you want to know? _Everything_?" He laughed again.

"We need to discuss your assignment."

Severus snorted. "Lie to the Dark Lord and report back what he says."  _And keep him the fuck away from Lily_.

"Yes," said Dumbledore. "But we need to determine the particulars." He sat down on the couch, rearranging his robes over his knees. Severus stared at him, letting the cigarette burn away in his hand. He was so bloody  _calm_ , as if he didn't even notice that Lily was gone. As if he didn't even care.

Severus's entire life had been ripped away from him, and bloody fucking Dumbledore wanted to  _determine the particulars_.

Severus jabbed his cigarette into the ashtray. When he looked back up, a white doe stood in the center of the room.

"Lily," he said.

The doe turned to him, silvery-white, with eyes that had Lily's kindness in them.  _I'm safe_ , it said, in a voice that was like Lily's and not-like hers, all at once.  _I'm here_.

"I'm glad to hear that," Dumbledore said.

"Did you check for traps?" Severus asked, voice shaking. This wasn't her. This was some ghost that sort of sounded like her, and he hated that it was here and she was not. "Like I showed you?"

The doe smiled.  _Yes,_ it said.  _Everything's safe. It_ is _a safe house, Sev_.

Severus scowled at that, wishing he could hear Lily say it, Lily the person, in her own damn voice.

"You should go _,"_ Severus said. "The Concealment Charm isn't in place yet." He shot Dumbledore one of his darker looks as he spoke, but Dumbledore remained unfazed.

The doe looked at him sadly, then drifted over to where he stood, nuzzling its head up against the back of his hand. Its touch was like the wind that blew in from the south, warm and damp.  _See you soon, Sev_ , it said, before dissolving away.

"Well," said Dumbledore. "I'm glad to see she's all right."

"Are you?" Severus said coolly.

Dumbledore ignored him. "Now, about your assignment. Please, Severus, sit - " He gestured towards one of the dining chairs that had somehow been dragged across the apartment during Lily's packing. "We have much to discuss."

Severus didn't want to sit. He wanted to blast something, anything, over and over again, until the rage simmering inside of him quieted into mere anger. He wanted to Apparate to the Dark Lord's side and slice him open from neck to navel. He wanted to Imperius or Cruciatus Dumbledore, whatever worked, into telling him where he had hidden Lily.

But he didn't do any of those things. Instead, he sat down, keeping his wand out so he could roll it between his palms and distract himself from his own thoughts.

"That's better. It's so much easier to have a chat when we're both sitting, don't you think?"

Severus glared at him in response.

"Now. Your assignment." Dumbledore leaned back in the couch, looking out of place amongst Lily's second-hand Muggle furnishings. "Is Voldemort still looking to infiltrate Hogwarts?"

Severus stopped rolling his wand.

"Of course he is," he said. "He's obsessed with Hogwarts."

Dumbledore smile. "Well, it was his home for many years, Severus. I'm sure you know what that's like."

Severus began rolling his wand again. He hated knowing that Dumbledore could be right about something.

"Ever since Mylar died, I've been considering the mistakes we made, looking for ways to correct them, so the same terrible fate wouldn't befall our next spy."

Severus slumped in his chair and watched his wand twist back and forth, back and forth.

"With Mylar, we simply sent him over as a Death Eater -"

"That was your mistake," Severus snapped. "The Dark Lord doesn't trust Order defectors."

"Ah yes, I thought as much, but I had no choice. That won't be an issue here."

Severus refused to look at him.

"But I think we can still strengthen your -  _defenses_ , let's say. Voldemort already thinks of you as a Death Eater, but if he were to think of you as a double agent as well - for his side, I mean," Dumbledore added when Severus jerked up his head.

"I see what you're getting at," Severus said slowly. "But I don't understand  _how_."

"I never filled the Potions position," Dumbledore said. "And Professor Slughorn is still retiring."

"You told me to come back when I had more experience."

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. Severus wanted to slam him with a hex. He was so fucking  _smug_.

"You know I would be a truly horrendous teacher," Severus said, instead of blasting Dumbledore through the wall of Lily's flat. "I hate children. I hate teenagers more. I hate most adults, when you get down to it. Besides, the Dark Lord wants me to teach Defense Against the Dark -"

"We've no opening."

"You will," Severus said, sneering. "The Dark Lord is  _certain_ of it. He's not usually wrong about those sorts of things."

"Be that as may, I'm more concerned with our open Potions position. And your skill with Potions is really quite remarkable, Severus. Slughorn actually mentioned you, you know, when he asked who would be replacing -"

"Don't flatter me," Severus said. "I'll do it. It's not as if I have much say in the matter."

"You always have a say in the matter." Dumbledore looked at him with those cold blue eyes, and for a moment Severus remembered that he was no longer a servant of the Dark Lord, and that Dumbledore was different.

_No,_ he thought.  _He's not. A master is a master_.

"If teaching the little brats how to mix up sleeping draughts will keep Lily safe - " Severus muttered.

"It'll keep you safe," Dumbledore said. "Although it's crucial that Voldemort sees you as a true double-agent - you must convince him that you will have convinced me that you have defected."

"I have defected."

Dumbledore looked at him the way he did whenever Severus was caught hexing first-years back at Hogwarts: more bemused than angry. "Then your task will be simple, won't it?"

Severus glared at him _._ "What do you know about it?"

Dumbledore didn't answer, but his eyes twinkled, and Severus' fingers twitched around his wand.

"I suggest you take this information to Voldemort as soon as possible," Dumbledore said, standing, brushing out the wrinkles in his robe. "I'll be contacting you shortly to meet with me concerning the matter of your Patronus."

Severus resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Ah yes, the fucking Patronus charm. The light in the dark. The knife in the heart of evil. The Order's bloody telephone system.

"I suppose I'll have to cast one," Severus said.

"It's how we communicate," Albus said. "And it will protect you."

Severus scowled. "The Dark Arts protected me well enough." His lips curled up. "Perhaps you should try them some time."

Dumbledore's face dimmed at their mention. Finally, something to faze the old man. Severus was willing to concede that Dumbledore was a more powerful wizard than himself - he'd be a fool not to - but he was secure in the knowledge that he knew more of the Dark Arts than Dumbledore ever could, if for no other reason than the fact that he understood they were not evil.

"I know," Severus said. "I can't use those anymore."

"No." Dumbledore paused. "Perhaps you shouldn't refer to Voldemort as the Dark Lord, either."

"Oh, for fuck's sake. And what am I supposed to call him? You-Know-Who, like some schoolgirl with a crush?"

For a brief second, Severus thought Dumbledore almost looked amused. "I put no stock in the fear of names and titles," he said. "But others around us do. You must convince the wizarding world that you hold no allegiance to him, and you must convince Voldemort himself that you are playing the role of his double agent to the full extent -"

"This is fucking confusing."

"I have full faith in your intelligence, Severus. I've no doubt you can successfully untangle the web we're creating here today."

God, he sounded as if he were giving one of his welcome-to-Hogwarts speeches. Severus wanted to find it annoying, but instead his chest twinged at the memory: a thousand candles floating in the air, the sort of food they couldn't afford at home, Lily at the table across the room, catching his eye every now and then, and smiling.

Severus pushed away from his chair, grabbed Lily's pack of cigarettes, and shoved it into his robes. He didn't look at Dumbledore.

"I'll give  _You-Know-Who_  the good news," he said. "Guess who's the new Potions master at Hogwarts."

Dumbledore gazed at him.

"Be careful about when you contact me," Severus went on. "Hate to blow my cover in the first week."

"Of course," Dumbledore said.

Christ, didn't the man ever get  _angry_?

Severus stomped across the flat, the floorboards echoing under his feet. He knew he'd never see it again, this flat. Knew he'd never walk through the door and smell cigarette smoke and lavender.

Well, at least he had the cigarettes. He'd stop at a gardening shop before he went home. He was going to be a fucking Potions professor - surely he could grow Muggle herbs in a pot on his back porch. Surely.


	37. Lily

Lily crashed into cold damp sand. It flew up into her face and coated her palms. Her head throbbed and her stomach twisted and ached. She tasted salt on her tongue.

A few paces away, her trunk appeared in a distortion of space and landed with a thump, kicking up more sand. Lily stretched out, giving herself time to recover. It was colder here; the wind blowing off the ocean was damp and chilly, a shock after the spring thaw in Dorny. The scent of the sea made her dizzy.

She pushed herself up to sitting. Slughorn flickered across the side of her trunk as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn't just been wrenched away from her flat, from Sev -

Lily put her hand on her stomach, wishing she could feel the baby moving inside of her.

The waves rolled in, crashing against the shore, flecks of sea foam glittering in the sun.

Lily stood up, her legs wobbling. She leaned against the trunk for support and looked past the swell of dunes and seagrass - there. A house, white stone walls and a modernized shingled roof. Pale green wisps of ivy were already creeping up from underneath the front porch and reaching for the windows. Smoke trickled out of the chimney, a line of grey against the thin early-spring sky.

It seemed safe, that house, with its ivy vines and its friendly chimney. A safe house.

Lily cast a charm to levitate her trunk alongside her as she trudged through the seagrass. Her head was full of cotton, her stomach roiled like the sea.

Up at the house, someone stepped out onto the porch.

"You Lily?" the someone asked. A woman, her voice deep-throated and raspy, like some actress Lily's mother liked - Jean Harlowe or Lauren Bacall or someone - although her accent was Irish, not American. "'Cause I'm gonna tell you now, if you're not Lily Evans, I'm obligated to blast you out into the ocean."

Lily wanted to laugh. "What would stop me from just claiming to be Lily?" she said. God, even Sev's paranoia was rubbing off on her - the thought made her heart hurt.

She missed him.

"Oh. This." The woman pulled her wand out of her robe - she wore an elaborately brocaded robe of the sort favored by wealthy pure-blood women, but she wore it open over a Muggle slip dress, like it was a coat - and swished it back and forth three times. A faint tickle of enchantment fell around Lily's shoulders.

"Well," the woman said. "That's settled."

"Am I who I say to be?"

"Magic never lies." The woman stepped off the porch, pointed her wand at Lily's trunk, and set it flying through the door. Lily appreciated that; portkeys always drained her. She didn't like having to maintain the levitation spell.

"You tell 'em you made it here safely yet?" the woman asked, cutting across the dunes. She only looked a few older than Lily, and she had a thick white scar tracing a curve from beside her left eye to underneath her cheekbone.

"What?"

"You ought to send your Patronus to Dumbledore."

"Oh, right." Lily lifted her wand, then stopped. "Wait. I promised -" She shook her head, laughed. "I promised someone I would check for traps."

She expected the woman to laugh with her, but she just nodded and said, "Well, get on with it."

Sev had shown her the spells; they were simple, and not Dark, although Lily wasn't familiar with them. For a few moments streams of golden light arced out of her wand, threading over and around and through the house. Everything came back clean.

"Satisified?" the woman asked.

"He will be." She couldn't bring herself to say his name. Not yet. She should still picture his face with ease, his nose and sharp cheekbones, his black hair and dark eyes. She wondered how long until that image started to fade. Then, maybe, she would say his name out loud, as if it could bring him back to her.

The woman watched her, the wind blowing her brown hair across her face. Lily turned toward the sea, toward England and Dorny and Sev, and cast her Patronus. She wished she could speak to Sev herself, wished she could look at him as she told him she was safe.

But that wasn't an option anymore.

Lily dropped her wand to her side and turned away from the sea. The woman stared at her.

"Let's get you settled, then," she said. "I'm sick of doing all the work around here. They couldn't even spare a house elf."

_The healer_ , Lily thought. She couldn't quite remember the name. Albus had told her -

"I'm Adelia, by the way," the woman said. She was up on the porch, one hand on the doorknob, watching Lily as she picked her way across the seagrass. "Adelia Prince. I'm a healer."

"Yes," said Lily. "I know."

"We don't have anyone here at the moment, though that's liable to change faster than you would think. They always seem to come in at the dead of night, too."

Lily stepped into the house's foyer. Sunlight streamed in through the windows, illuminating swirls of transparent dust. The floors were polished wood, the furniture was sparse and threadbare. It almost reminded Lily of her flat.

"Your room's upstairs," Adelia said. "That's where I put your trunk. Let me show you the office."

"The office?"

"Yes, that's where all the administrative nonsense takes place. Mostly arranging transportation and refining the wards. Keeping track of the Death Eaters. They don't bother much with Ireland, but you'll get reports now and then." Adelia shrugged.

_I have to do all that_? Lily thought, although she was not so dazed from her separation with Sev that she said it out loud. Adelia led her down a dark hallway.

"There," Adelia said. "Your office."

Lily peeked in. The walls were lined with shelves, some containing books, some containing Muggle knicknacks - portkeys, Lily guessed, or future portkeys. There was a desk in the center of the room stacked with newspapers, the  _Daily Prophet_  and another one Lily didn't recognize,  _Sorcerer's Star_.

"You'll be in charge of food preparation, too," Adelia said. "Once we have residents. I can cook for myself until then."

"I don't mind cooking," Lily said.

Adelia shrugged and stepped out of the office, closing the door behind her. "We get food deliveries from the grocer in Angua Beach once a week, although it's only about a ten minute broom ride from here if you need anything more. You can't Apparate on or off the property - the wards extend for about five kilometers. They tend to bring us children, that's why those type of wards are installed here. It's the same charm they use at Hogwarts. You went there, didn't you?"

Lily nodded.

"I did too, for a few years, before my parents - well, before they decided to take my education into their own hands." Adelia's face darkened. Her scar looked pinkish in the light of the house. Lily tried not to stare at it.

"What - what year?" Lily asked, because she didn't remember anyone named Adelia Prince.

"Before your time," Adelia said. "How old are you, anyway, eighteen? You look like a student."

"I'm twenty."

Adelia smiled. "You seem more mature than I was at that age." She traced a finger down the length of her scar. "I had a tendency to pick fights with the wrong sort of person."

"I don't like fighting," Lily said stupidly.

"I don't either. Not anymore." Adelia smiled again, more ruefully this time, and led Lily back down the hallway, to the back of the house. The kitchen was a room that had obviously been added on after the house had been built, because its walls were wood and plaster, and the floor was linoleum and sounded hollow when Lily walked across it.

"The dining room's through that door there." Adelia pointed. "I don't bother with it when we don't have residents."

Lily stepped into the middle of the kitchen, feeling as if she were walking through a dream. The light seemed different here, gauzier. Maybe it was because of the salt in the air or maybe it was because of the wards. Lily couldn't tell.

"The greenhouses are back here," Adelia went on, pushing open a door that led to the outside. Lily stood in the doorway and looked. There were two greenhouses, small and tidy, a garden nestled between them, the soil dark and tilled but empty of plants.

"What do you grow?" Lily asked.

"Oh, healing plants mostly. Some herbs and vegetables." Adelia shut the door. "You'll need to help me with them, unless you're one of those types who kills every plant she touches."

"I did well in Herbology."

Adelia gave her a strange, steely look. "You aren't in Hogwarts anymore."

Lily glared back. "I know that better than anyone." And her hand dropped to her stomach without her meaning to.

"Another war baby," Adelia said, her voice tired, as if she had seen more than her share the past few years.

"They told me you were a midwife."

"They told you right. I even work with Muggles sometimes."

Lily blinked. "Really? You can do that?"

"I can do whatever I want. But I mean, I don't use  _magic_ on them. Well, not obvious magic anyway." She grinned, showing a hint of teeth. "I'll sometimes bring in plants and things. I don't like the idea of letting someone die just because the Brits want to keep everything a bloody secret."

Suddenly, Lily liked this woman. She wondered if Sev would approve of her, if he would consider her an acceptable replacement for Madame Tring.

She decided that he probably would.

"You should go unpack," Adelia said. "And savor the peace while you've got it. Because it's not going to last."


	38. Snape

Severus Apparated to the mill house. He landed near the river, a half kilometer or so from the house's front door, because he was about to embark on his first meeting with the Dark Lord as a double agent, and he wanted time to think.

He plodded alongside the river, toward the mill house glowing green in the twilight. The world was silent and still: no quiet susurration of insects, no trilling bird calls, no plops of fish in the river. It was the Dark Lord. Severus had never been so aware of his effect on the landscape as he was in this moment.

He knocked on the door. Avery the Younger answered. He grinned when he saw who it was.

"Snape," he said. "Haven't seen you in ages."

"No." Severus pushed past him. He didn't want to deal with Avery right now, didn't want to listen to him relive his fucking glory days as a malicious idiot teenager. "I need to speak to the Dark Lord."

Avery frowned at the rebuff. "Is he expecting you?"

"Does it matter?" Severus snapped. "Tell him I have good news. About Hogwarts."

Avery's eyes widened, and he nodded and scurried off toward the back of the mill house. Severus built up his Occlumency, adding layers and strength, drawing up the false memory of Dumbledore's offer to teach Potions to the front of his thoughts. He'd spent longer crafting it than usual.

Beneath his shields, his panic was a sickness.

"Severus!" The Dark Lord appeared out of the shadows, Avery at his side. "I hear you have good news for me."

"Yes, my lord." The memory twinkled and shimmered, bright as a postcard. "Dumbledore contacted me two days ago. I've just finished meeting with him now."

The Dark Lord smiled, showing all his teeth. "Avery," he hissed. "Leave us."

Avery looked from the Dark Lord to Severus and back again, his eyes wide. Severus fixed him with a cold, cruel stare, and he seemed to wilt.

He disappeared into the next room.

"What did Dumbledore say?" the Dark Lord asked, stretching out his arm, slipping it around Severus's shoulders. "Tell me, tell me everything."

"He couldn't fill the Potions position."

"Is that so?" The Dark Lord ran his tongue, thin and forked like a snake's, over his teeth. "How interesting."

"And it seems that Professor Slughorn mentioned me specifically, when Dumbledore asked him to suggest potential candidates. This was after my first interview." Severus paused. The Dark Lord's hand froze his skin through the fabric of his robes. "He offered me the position."

The Dark Lord curled his fingers around Severus's shoulder. Severus held his breath, held his shields. His heart pounded wildly inside his chest.

And then the Dark Lord jerked Severus around so they were facing each other, and he had his eyes on his, and he was inside his mind, inside the memory.

Dumbledore and Severus at the headmaster's office at Hogwarts. Dumbledore saying,  _Horace spoke so highly of you, and with so few qualified candidates - I do hope you'll understand why I didn't offer the position to you earlier - you can of course learn how to teach -_

And on and on, Severus nodding his head in the background.

The Dark Lord pulled back, although he didn't leave Severus's mind entirely. He seemed pleased; he had loosened his grip on Severus's shoulder, and his thumb was rubbing circles through Severus's robe.

"You said yes?" the Dark Lord asked.

"Of course, my lord. I know it's not Defense Against the Dark Arts, but once I'm established on the faculty I'm certain I can work my way into the position."

The Dark Lord closed his eyes and smiled. Then he drew Severus into another one of his frozen embraces. Behind the shields, Severus wished it was Lily who held him.

"Severus, Severus, this pleases me as you can't imagine. After the affair with Bellatrix - but no, we won't discuss that now." He dropped his arm away from Severus but Severus knew better than to take a step back. "Slughorn," he said. "He is -  _was_  - the head of Slytherin House, yes?"

Severus nodded.

"Well you be assuming that position as well?"

"I don't know, my lord." One of the only truths he had spoken in the entire conversation. "Presumably."

"No presumably," the Dark Lord said. "You must  _ensure_ that you're made Head of Slytherin. So many of those in the Inner Circle were sorted into Slytherin, did you know that? Not all, of course, but it will give you close proximity to future recruits. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my lord."

The Dark Lord smiled again and stroked Severus's cheek with the back of his hand. He was still inside Severus's head, hovering near the edges, cold as his touch.

"We must also discuss the matter of your cover," the Dark Lord said.

"My cover, my lord?"

"Why, yes." The Dark Lord blinked, sideways like a reptile. "You and I both know Dumbledore would never hire a Death Eater to teach at his precious school. He obviously doesn't know who you are."

"No, my lord." And Severus tightened his shields a little bit more.

"He - and the rest of the wizarding world - must continue to believe you do not serve me. I know it will be difficult for you -" The Dark Lord paused, settled deeper into Severus's thoughts.

"Yes," Severus said without hesitation. "Yes, my lord, I don't want to deny you. It pains me - the very idea - "

The Dark Lord ran his hand down Severus's hair. "You aren't denying me, Severus. You are  _protecting_ me. And that is the greatest honor I can bestow upon one of my Death Eaters. And I swear to you, when I've attained my power, all the world will know of your sacrifice." He dropped his hand to Severus's left arm and pushed up the sleeve of his robe. The Dark Mark lay coiled there, dark and still and unburning. "You must hide this. Take whatever precautions you need. But I will not remove it. I may still call you from time to time, although as long as you are at Hogwarts, I won't expect you to respond immediately."

Severus stared at him.

"You must, of course, still  _respond_. But I will understand if  _immediately_  takes on different meaning for you now. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my lord."

The Dark Lord pushed the sleeve back down Severus's arm, hiding the Dark Mark.

"If you are caught," the Dark Lord said, "you understand that I will have to kill you."

Severus didn't move. "Yes, my lord."

"I am trusting you, Severus, and if Dumbledore finds out where your true loyalties lie, you will have betrayed that trust. And when someone betrays my trust, I kill him."

"I know, my lord. I will not be discovered."

"I don't want to kill you, Severus."

Severus nodded. He couldn't bring himself to say anything more.

The Dark Lord stepped back, and he was smiling again, a cat with a canary. "We're so close," he said. "So close. To take Hogwarts -" He sighed. His smile deepened. "I may not see much of you in the coming months, Severus, but I want you to remember: you are precious to me. What you are doing, it's precious."

For a long moment Severus didn't move. Then he nodded, dipping his head. "Thank you, my lord."

The Dark Lord's smile slipped away.

"Just remember," he said. "You do not have the option of making a mistake."

And then he turned and strode out of the room, before Severus even had a chance to answer.

* * *

The Patronus was waiting for Severus in his living room, its light glowing pale green from passing through the wards on his house. He had strengthened them recently: with Dark magic, still, although he drew their strength from the grass budding in the thawed dirt, and from the spindly oak trees in his neighbor's yard, and, if he was being honest, a little from his neighbors themselves. Sometimes he heard them fighting in the evenings as the sun sank bright and toxic into the river.

He couldn't stand the thought of giving up any more of Lily.

The Patronus lifted up on its great glimmering wings and perched on the back of Severus's arm chair.

"Your timing," Severus said, "leaves something to be desired."

_Have you met with Voldemort yet?_

"Yes," Severus snarled. "I just fucking did, in fact, and if you don't mind, I'd like to have a glass of elf-wine and give myself some time to _think_ before traipsing off to meet with my second master."

The phoenix stared back at him, as implacable as the old man himself. Severus resisted the urge to throw something at it, to see if the stupid bird would squawk and flap around like a frightened parrot. Probably not. He didn't know much about the Patronus charm, but he knew, from when Lily's had pressed up against him, that it wasn't tangible in the physical sense.

_Unfortunately_ , he thought. He stalked into the kitchen and rummaged through the refrigerator until he found his opened bottle of wine - his refrigerator was full of Lily-things, food she'd cooked and things she bought, milk and eggs and butter, fresh vegetables from the market in her old neighborhood that were now wilted and dark, a package of steaks she'd planned to grill that were now past their expiration date. He hated the sight of it all, and he didn't want to throw any of it away.

_Severus,_ the phoenix said, and Severus jumped at its scratchy garbled-Dumbledore voice and hit his head on the top of the refrigerator.

"Christ, you couldn't take the hint?" Severus muttered, extracting himself from the refrigerator and summoning a wine glass out of his cupboard.

_It's not necessary for you to meet with me immediately_ , the phoenix said.  _But as soon as you are able. Later this evening, perhaps, tomorrow morning._

Severus poured the wine and took a long gulp. "Really," he said.

_Really what?_

"You really don't expect me to drop everything so you can tell me what you want me to do next." Severus took another drink of wine. "I don't believe  _that_  for a fucking second." He ran his hand over his Dark Mark, thinking of the way it burned and smoked whenever the Dark Lord wanted him near. "I know how these things work, Dumbledore. You need to send your little lackeys scurrying all over wizarding England, in order to ensure victory, and if one of us screws up the whole thing could topple over." He drained his glass, poured another. The wine created a nest of warmth inside his belly, and he knew he needed to be careful - intoxication weakened the infrastructure of his Occlumency.

_Is that so?_

"It's how it worked for the Dark - for  _You-Know-Who_ -" Severus couldn't say that stupid nickname with lapsing into a mocking sing-song. "Don't know why it would be any different with you."

_I'm sorry to hear you think that, Severus_.

For a moment, Severus almost believed him. He  _wanted_ to believe him. He knew that Lily trusted Dumbledore, but Lily was Lily: she was not a Death Eater, former or otherwise, she mistrusted the Dark Arts, and although she had killed, she had done so out of bloody  _kindness_. Dumbledore would protect Lily, now that she was pregnant and Severus was his spy: of that Severus had no doubt. But he saw no reason for the old man to protect  _him_.

"Give me an hour or so," Severus said. "And I'll meet with you to discuss - whatever." He drank more wine. It was stale from sitting in the refrigerator, but he hardly tasted it anyway. "The meeting went well, in case you're worried the anticipation might kill you."

_I look forward to our discussion,_ the phoenix said.  _Come to Order headquarters when you're ready. You may use any anti-tracking spells you deem necessary, but Severus, I urge you to move away from your dependence on the Dark Arts._

_Oh, go fuck yourself_ , Severus thought, although he didn't say anything, just glared at the Patronus over the lip of his wineglass.

_They do more damage than good._

Severus's glare deepened, and this time, he didn't try to hold his tongue. "And how do you know?" he snapped. "You prepare the anti-nightmare potion lately?"

The phoenix blinked at him, unmoving, unspeaking, hazy light filling the kitchen.

"Of course not," Severus went on. "You'd rather the Order suffer through the trauma of the waking nightmares, rather have your best operatives wake up screaming every night because you sent them off to kill Death Eaters." Severus sneered, a dull fury working its way through his bloodstream. His hands trembled. "You know nothing about the Dark Arts, Dumbledore, if you think they're good for murder and torture and nothing else. Nothing."

He slammed the wine glass on the counter hard enough that an almost-invisible crack formed in the stem.

"But because you're hiding her," Severus said. "Because you're hiding my fucking baby, I'll scrounge up something else. It'll be weak and ineffectual, but at least it won't be Dark. And that's all that matters, isn't it?"

For a long time the phoenix didn't respond. The kitchen shimmered with greenish light, reminding Severus of the Slytherin common room, the place where he used to stay up until the early morning arguing the finer points of Dark magic, first with Malfoy and then later Avery - although to be honest with himself, neither of them had much use for Dark healing magic, either.

The phoenix gazed at him sadly. When it finally spoke, its voice sounded closer to Dumbledore's than before.

_Not all light magic is weak_ , the phoenix said.

And before Severus could respond, it dissolved away, a shower of green and white coruscations.


	39. Snape

Severus glared at the tea Dumbledore had set out in the sitting room of Order headquarters. Tea and biscuits on a polished silver platter, the sort of thing you'd expect from a proper old pure-blood.

The Dark Lord never served him tea.

Dumbledore stepped into the room and cast that silencing spell of his, then sat down at the chair across from Severus and poured himself a cup.

"Don't you want any, Severus?" Dumbledore asked.

"No."

Dumbledore dropped in a cube of sugar and stirred. "You said your meeting went well. I take it Voldemort is convinced of your loyalty to him?"

"Yes." Severus thought about how the Dark Lord said he would kill him if he was discovered.  _The least of your worries_ ,  _Tom_ , Severus thought, feeling smug. "He thinks you never knew I was a Death Eater. I may have -  _encouraged_ the notion."

Dumbledore nodded approvingly, but Severus didn't give a shit about his approval.

"He wants me to recruit for the Death Eaters, primarily, as well as feed him information."

"I assumed as much. I'll prepare falsities for you to give him on occasion."

"Good. I didn't want to have to make shit up on the spot. By the way, false memories would be the best method for getting the information to him. He likes to - dig around inside my head."

Something flashed across Dumbledore's face - a slight widening off his eyes, a slight drop of his mouth. Only there for a second and then it was back to the usual calm composure. But Severus saw it.

"That shocks you?" he sneered.

"I'm shocked that you let him."

"It demonstrates fealty." Severus leaned back in his chair, wondering what else he could say to break through Dumbledore's infuriating unflappability. "There was a time when I enjoyed it. Looked forward to it, even."

Damn. Didn't work.

"I'll make sure to assist you in crafting false memories," Dumbledore said, as if Severus hadn't spoken at all. "Mylar was not, I'm afraid, so skilled in that particular area, and it may have explained his -"

"Failure?" Severus said. "Torture? Horrific, drawn-out death?"

Dumbledore gazed at him. "Is there anything else you have to report?"

It would be so easy to lie to him. Severus would never do it, of course, because of Lily and Harriet, but it would be so  _easy_  compared to lying to the Dark Lord. No false memories, no walls constructed inside his head. Just a clear expression and a few choice words.

No wonder the Dark Lord was winning.

"He wants me to be head of Slytherin House," Severus said. "For recruitment purposes, mainly."

Dumbledore stroked the tip of his beard. "That's a rather large responsibility," he said. "To be in charge of a House."

"Oh?" asked Severus. "As big a responsibility as spying for the Order of the fucking Phoenix?"

Dumbledore actually smiled. "Ah, yes, you have me there. But it's a different kind of responsibility - ensuring the well-being of your students."

"Well, I'll follow Sluggy's example and start up a club for all the rising stars of Hogwarts. What do you say that? Let the others languish? The git didn't even know the names of half the Slytherins in my year."

Dumbledore's smile was gone now, his eyes serious. "That doesn't strike me as your style, Severus."

Severus had no idea what Dumbledore meant by that, so he decided to take it as an insult and glowered at him in response.

"Still, I do think making you head of Slytherin will be a good step in ensuring Voldemort's trust. You can also use the position to ingratiate yourself with the Slytherin students' parents. So many of them have ties to Voldemort -"

"You'd be surprised," Severus snapped. "He's got more than Slytherins wearing those masks."

Dumbledore blinked. Was that another flash of surprise?

"I've watched quite a few of your precious Gryffindors slaughter innocents. That famed bravery comes in handy when you want to drag blood-traitors out of their homes in the middle of the night. Complete willingness to run face-first into danger." Severus smirked. "The Dark Lord collects them for just that reason, the way he collects Hufflepuffs for their undying - death- _inducing_ , really - loyalty. And Ravenclaws always invent the cruelest spells."

SIlence fell over the room. The spell shimmered over the walls. For a long time, neither Dumbledore nor Severus moved.

"One's House," Dumbledore finally said, "does not determine one's fate."

"That's a different philosophy from you than what I remember, Headmaster."

"Perhaps you misunderstood," Dumbledore said lightly. Then: "Is there anything else you wish to report?"

Severus scowled - the bastard wouldn't even admit when he was wrong. "No."

"In that case, then, I feel a magic lesson is in order."

"A  _what_?" Severus straightened up in his chair and gawked at Dumbledore. "Contrary to what you might think, I'm perfectly capable of casting non-Dark spells, I simply prefer -"

"This isn't about the Dark Arts," Dumbledore said. "It's about your Patronus."

Oh. Of course.

"All members of the Order learn to cast the Patronus charm. Using it as a defense may be dangerous for you -"

"Really," Severus said. "You think?"

Dumbledore ignored him. "But you'll still need it to communicate with the others."

"What others? I thought no one else is to know about me, and you know damn well I'm not going to risk communicating with Lily."

"You'll use it to communicate with me." Dumbledore smiled. "Most of your time will be spent at Hogwarts, yes, but I want to ensure that you'll be able to speak to me if you're ever in the field for any reason. If you require aid, anything of that nature."

Severus scoffed.

"It'll be good for you," Dumbledore added.

"Good for me? It's just a spell."

Dumbledore shrugged. "Perhaps. Have you ever tried casting it before?"

"Of course not." Severus's lip curled. "I was more interested in creating hexes and blocks to  _counteract_ it."

"Were you ever successful?"

"You know I wasn't."

"Perhaps if you had learned to cast it," Dumbledore said, "you would have accomplished your goals. Although I must say I'm rather grateful that you didn't."

_So am I,_ Severus thought, even though he would never say it aloud. Not to Dumbledore.

"It's rather like chess," Dumbledore said. "Seemingly straightforward until you try to cast it."

"What's the incantation?" Severus pulled out his wand and swung it back and forth from between his thumb and forefinger. He'd heard Lily cast it, of course, but he couldn't quite remember - Expecta Patronus, Expectum Patrona, something like that.

_"_ Expecto Patronum," Dumbledore said.

Severus flicked out his wand.  _"Expecto Patronum!"_

Nothing happened.

"I'm afraid it requires a bit more than that," Dumbledore said. "You must conjure up a memory, a happy one, something that has power for you -"

Severus froze, his fingers curling tight around his wand.  _The hypocrites are doing Dark Magic._ The thought should've filled him with a gleeful sort of satisfaction, and yet -

"I won't give up my memories of her," he said, using his Death Eater voice, low and dangerous.

Dumbledore stared at him for a few seconds before erupting into laughter. Rage billowed up inside Severus's heart, and he leapt to his feet, scraping the chair back across the floor.

"Stop laughing at me!" he roared. "She's the reason I'm even here, you doddering old fool!" He jerked his wand up level with Dumbledore's chest.  _"Stop it!"_

Dumbledore's laughter trailed away. "Oh, Severus, you misunderstand. I would never laugh at - at your feelings for Lily. Never. I was merely - the Patronus charm is not Dark magic, Severus. The memory fuels the spell, yes, but in casting the charm you strengthen your hold on whichever memory you choose. It doesn't slip away from you at all. It becomes stronger, more vivid, like it happened yesterday instead of years ago." Dumbledore tilted his head, his face wiped clean of all his previous mirth.

Severus dropped his wand to his side. His blood still pounded through his body as if he were angry, but he didn't feel anger anymore, only a strange and bewildering calmness. He'd used memories in his magic since he was a teenager, but using them always meant giving them up. But there was nothing sacrificial here. Nothing Dark.

"Are you certain?" Severus said softly, dangerously, even though he already knew the answer.

"I would never ask you to give up Lily," Dumbledore said. "Not like that. Not permanently."

Severus looked away from him, down to his wand. He knew the answer, but he hadn't expected Dumbledore to answer quite like that.

"Try again," Dumbledore said.

Severus took a deep breath. He wasn't fully Occluding at the moment, and so the memories drifted in like dandelion seeds, soft and painless: seeing Lily for the first time. Speaking to her for the first time. Finding their secret place in the woods. Studying together. Lily saying him  _I do too_  after he told her he loved her. Discovering the secrets of her body. Seeing that swirl of light that would someday grow into their child.

Severus lifted up his wand and fixed his gaze on Dumbledore.

"If I lose this memory," he said, "I will kill you."

"Fair enough," Dumbledore said cheerfully.

Severus focused in on Christmas. The transfigured Christmas tree, his living room fractured and bright as a kaleidoscope from all the fairy lights. The warmth of the fireplace and the warmth of Lily's body, the way she snuggled up against him after they had finished, murmuring into his neck, telling him that she loved him. If only there hadn't been this stupid war, if only there had never been the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters, she would still be here, and he would be guaranteed dozens more Christmases just like that one.

_"Expecto Patronum!"_ Severus shouted, flicking his wand. This time, the tip glowed with that familiar white light, but something was repressing the rest of the Patronus - Severus could feel it, beating back inside his brain. Melancholy.  _She's gone, it's tainted all my memories of her_.

"Fuck!" Severus dropped his wand and scowled. "I can't do this."

"Anyone can do this."

"I could do it if Lily were here."

Dumbledore regarded Severus with a clear, thoughtful expression, teacherly and kind. "Pretend that she is."

Severus laughed.

"Really, Severus," Dumbledore said. "You can create false memories to fool Voldemort, but you can't fool yourself?"

Something about Dumbledore's voice caught at a hook inside Severus's mind.  _Pretend she's not here - You can create false memories -_

"You want me to use Occlumency?"

"Just at first. The charm becomes easier to cast the more you practice. I would advise against depending on Occlumency -"

"You advise against everything that works." Severus drew up the memory of Christmas again, only this time he built walls around, high ones that kept everything out but that memory, and so that memory was the only thing in his head: Lily and happiness. His body was weightless, his soul as clean and transparent as new glass.

_"Expecto Patronum!"_  he said again, and this time the room flooded with white light, bright enough that for a moment Severus was blinded. And then the light faded away, and there a doe standing in the middle of the room.

"Lily?" Severus gasped. His wand clattered to the floor. The doe turned toward him, her eyes like Lily's, and he waited for her voice, distorted and distant -

"Severus," Dumbledore said. "You did it."

"What are you talking about? It's just -" And then Severus realized. His and Lily's Patronuses were the same.

"I don't understand," Severus said. The memory of Christmas was still glowing inside his head, brighter than before. "Does it work that way?"

"For two people to share a Patronus? Sometimes."

The doe blinked at Severus and then faded away. The room seemed dark as night without it.

"What does it mean?" Severus asked.

"What does what mean?"

"My Patronus!" he shouted. "What does it mean that it's the same?"

Dumbledore looked  _amused_. Severus wanted to hit him. But then he said, "It means you love her, Severus. That's all. It means she makes you happy."

Severus gaped at him for a moment, then collapsed down in the chair, his heart pounding. He was still dazed from casting the charm. Magic never wore him out like this unless it was Dark. But he wasn't worn out, not really, just - he was  _calm_. Content. Inside his head the memory played on. He didn't want to let the rest back in yet.

"It doesn't surprise me, that you and Lily share a Patronus."

Severus jerked his head over to Dumbledore and sneered. He couldn't help himself. "Really? It doesn't surprise you that I love her?" His sneer deepened. "That I'm capable of love at all?"

"No," said Dumbledore. "Not in the slightest."

His response struck Severus dumb. He turned away from Dumbledore and stared at the place where his Patronus had stood, and he remembered Christmas.


	40. Lily

The safe house remained empty for a week. Lily unpacked her things and visited Angua Beach, which was little more than a few windworn houses and a grocer and a tiny magic-supply shop. She helped Adelia in the garden - the last of the frosts had passed and Adelia was putting in rows of vegetables, carrots and peas and potatoes. She practiced making portkeys. In the mornings she walked down to the beach and listened to the seabirds call out to another. The horizon line was grey and hazy with mist, and Lily felt that if he she stared at it long enough, and hard enough, the mist would clear and she would see Sev in his house in Spinner's End, brewing potions and reading ancient, dusty textbooks.

During her first full day in Ireland, a rush of enchantment slammed into her out of nowhere. She was on the beach when it happened, walking along the waterline, and she stumbled and tripped and crashed into the freezing foamy waves. It knocked the breath out of her lungs, left her dazed - but she also knew she was safe and protected. The Concealment Charm.

She thought of Sev, then, even though it was Remus who cast it, Remus who was keeping her secret. And a few tears eked out, the first of many during those early weeks, and she sat there shivering and weeping, water splashing up over her legs and hips.

"Lily?"

It was Adelia, of course, the only other person at the safe house. Lily blinked up at her through the grey morning light as she cut across the sand.

"Who'd you leave behind?" she asked.

Lily wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. She was still a little superstitious about saying his name out loud, but Adelia was giving her a weird, forceful expression. The way her arms crossed over her chest made the muscles in her biceps stand out.

"Sev," Lily said.

Adelia examined her for a long time. "Is he dead?"

Lily shook her head.

"Then what you are crying for?" Adelia held out one hand. Lily took it and Adelia pulled her to her feet. "The Ministry's calling you, by the way."

"The Ministry?" Lily tried to knock the sand off her jeans but it just smeared and clung to her hands. "What do they want with me?"

"You're running an Order safehouse," Adelia said. "I imagine they'll want to talk to you about portkeys or some such nonsense. The MLE's constantly ringing us up here. They're waiting for you in the office fireplace."

"It's my first day!"

Adelia shrugged. "They know."

As it turned out, the call was from the head of the MLE himself, and he simply wanted to introduce himself to Lily, and thank her for volunteering to keep the safe house in order. Lily didn't bother to tell him that she hadn't exactly volunteered, although their talk, short though it was, made her feel a little better.

She still missed Sev.

The first resident portkeyed in the Tuesday after Lily arrived, a man whose wife had joined the Order without him knowing and was consequently killed in a skirmish outside London. The man was named Arthur Bront and he had, up until the moment he saw his wife die, been completely apolitical. His first day at the safe house, after Adelia had examined him for curses and injuries, he sat on the back porch for hours, casting schoolboy hexes into the air. Lily tried to talk to him, to tell him that she knew what it was like to lose someone you love to the Death Eaters (even if her love hadn't truly died - but it felt like he had, all that time ago), but Adelia put on hand on her arm and shook her head.

"Leave him be," she said softly. They were standing in the kitchen and every now and then bursts of magic-light filtered through the windows. "He's not messing up the garden, and he doesn't want to talk. I tried, a bit, but -" She shrugged. "You'll learn to tell the difference, between the ones who want someone to talk to and the ones who just want to sit."

"I feel bad for him," Lily said, feeling like an idiot.

"You'll feel bad for all of them," Adelia said. "But you can't butt in unless you know they want it."

Lily nodded, even if she didn't, at that moment, completely understand.

The next pair of residents arrived two days later - a couple of Aurors who'd been the subject of some prophecy or another that Dumbledore found worrisome. They weren't so weighed down by sorrow, and in the evenings they'd drink butter beer out on the front porch with Adelia. Lily heard their laughter drifting in through the open windows. So did Arthur. He scowled and dropped the book he'd been reading on the floor.

"Don't know how they can laugh," he muttered. "With people dying."

Lily glanced at him. She was reading a potions magazine she'd had the Angua Beach grocer bring over because it reminded her of Sev.

Arthur scowled at the unlit fireplace. The night was warm, unseasonably so but still pleasant.

"I think that's how some people deal with sadness," Lily said. "Laughter." Who had told her that? Remus, she remembered, the night of the New Years party. "It was never my preferred method, either," she added.

Arthur looked over at her. His expression was strange, muddled and pained. "How do you deal with it?" he asked.

Lily blinked and looked down at her magazine. Another burst of laughter out on the porch. She decided she would be honest. "I had someone," she said. "A - a boyfriend. He made me feel better. But he's gone now."

Arthur stared at her.

"He isn't dead. Just - gone." She held up the magazine. On the cover, some pretty witch stirred a cauldron, pink steam swirling up around her shoulders. The magazine was old, from February. "He's the reason I'm reading this. I hated potions. It was the only subject I ever had to _work_ at, you know?" She laughed because she was afraid she might start crying.

Arthur stared at her for a seconds longer. His mouth snapped up into a smile that disappeared as quickly as it came. "It was like that with me and Marjorie, only with charms instead of potions." He gave this short, barking noise Lily thought might be a laugh. "We both despised potions."

Lily laughed herself, then, although she couldn't say why.

"It hurts, doesn't it?" Arthur asked, his attention focused back on the fireplace. Lily stared at the grating. It needed to be cleaned. The whole thing was coated with ash and the faint sparkle of used up Floo powder.

"It hurts more than anything," Lily said. "And all you can hope is to get used to it."

Arthur nodded. "That's what I thought," he said softly. He looked at her over his shoulder, his eyes shadowed and dark. "Thank you for telling me the truth."


	41. Lily

It didn't take long for Lily to adjust to the routine of the safe house. Residents arrived; residents left. To distract her mind from other things, she cooked everyday: big hearty breakfasts, sandwiches and soups for lunch, biscuits and cakes for tea, simple meat-and-vegetable suppers. On Wednesdays supplies replenished themselves in the cupboard and the refrigerator - the Angua Beach deliveries. In the early mornings, just after dawn, Lily walked along the beach for exercise. It was good for the baby, Adelia told her. In the afternoons she created portkeys.

She was getting better at it, so good she could make a portkey in a few seconds time, if needed - which it never was. Every Friday an Auror arrived on the front door to collect the newest batch of portkeys for distribution, since they were charmed to deactivate with disuse. It was always someone Lily had known from before the safe house, and it was usually Alice Longbottom.

"How's yours doing?" Alice asked, one bright April afternoon. Lily had invited her in for tea, and they sat in the parlor eating lemon cakes like rich ladies. "How far along are you? I can hardly tell with other people. Three months? Four months?"

"Four." Lily dropped her hand down to the slight swell of her belly. Alice looked a little farther along than her, but then, Lily had nothing to compare it to but her own body.

"A boy or a girl?" Alice sipped at her tea.

"A girl." Lily smiled. "We're going to name her Harriet."

" _We_?" Alice raised an eyebrow. Lily's smile froze.

"Yes," she said. "The father and I."

For a moment she was certain Alice was going to ask after the father's name - Lily imagined that the father of her child was high on the list of gossip amongst the Order, even though she had no reason to - but Alice only set her teacup down and said, "We're having a boy. We still haven't decided on a name yet. It'll be a family name, of course -" She rolled her eyes. "Wizards. We've got it narrowed down. Augustus, Neville, Cuthbert."

Lily smiled politely and bit into her lemon cake. It was dry, a bit too powdery. She'd been thinking of Sev when she made them, daydreaming about an afternoon she spent Transfiguring the snow in his yard into a menagerie of ice-creatures while he watched on and mocked Transfiguration as worthless and stupid, the way he always did. The present had gotten away from her, and she dumped too much flour in the bowl. Still, they turned out all right, all things considering.

"I like Neville myself," Alice was saying. "But it's my father's name, so I suppose I'm a bit biased."

Lily didn't like any of the names - she found them all too old-fashioned. She remembered how the children in Sev's neighborhood teased him about his name. Petunia had always been the worst about it.

Alice Longbottom left that day with an handful of tiny portkeys, the sort certain trusted Aurors kept tucked away in their pockets for emergency transportation during battles. She used the umbrella stand in the entranceway to portkey back to Order headquarters - Lily had devised that one, and set a charm on it so that it would stay in place during transportation. No sense in creating a new portkey every time an Order member popped by for a chat.

Lily called up the MLE and spent a few minutes speaking with Elton Ruford about the new batch of battle-ready portkeys. Adelia had been right about that, about how much Lily spoke with the Ministry. It was constant, another routine she had memorized. She spoke to them about portkeys and about residents. Every time someone new arrived, every time someone left: she always had to dial up the Ministry and sit for a few minutes with Ruford, the fire toasting her face. Why, she wondered, couldn't wizards devise a method of communication that didn't involve smelling like a fireplace afterwards? Spring was everywhere in Ireland, the chill in the air pleasant instead of frigid, and the air smelled like flowers and sea salt. The last thing she wanted was to hunch in front of a fire talking about the influx of war orphans that would be flooding into the house come summer.

"Can't keep 'em at Hogwarts," Ruford said. "Can't send him home."

Lily didn't mind. She liked the idea of children; she really knew nothing about them, and it would be good practice, she thought, for Harriet.

Days passed. They were all the same. Portkeys and meals prepared half by hand and half with magic. Aurors kissed by Dark magic showed up pale and shaking on the front porch at three in the morning. Lily outgrew her clothes and sent to Angua Beach for maternity dresses, flowing and soft like spring sunlight.

She knew the baby was there, now. Even if her body hadn't expanded and transformed she would have known. She could feel the nascent magic of  _her_ , her Harriet, a spark like electricity, a Muggle light switch turning on and off and on.

She was content. She couldn't call it happiness, not with all that melancholy streaking like limestone through her mood. But it wasn't the same darkness as that year and a half after Hogwarts, either.

One morning Lily sat down with her cup of coffee - no one else in the safe house ever touched the stuff, but the taste of it, rich and bitter, reminded her of Sev - and opened up the day's edition of  _The Daily Prophet_. It was the middle of May, and the days were growing longer and warmer, and soon the safe house would be flush with children on holidays. But not yet.

On the second page of the newspaper, Sev stared up at her.

Lily dropped the newspaper and nearly knocked over her coffee. Her heart hammered inside her chest. For a brief, panicky second she thought that he had been captured, that he had been branded as a Death Eater even though he was a Death Eater no longer, and all because Albus wanted to -  _had_ to - keep it a secret -

But no. It was only an announcement about Sev's recent appointment to the faculty at Hogwarts. Lily read over the blurb, once and then twice, the words soaking into her.  _Recent retirement of Horace Slughorn... Potions master... alleged Death Eater_...

Lily pressed her thumb against that last part and murmured an old disguise charm from Hogwarts. When she pulled her hand away the ink had smeared, and there was no mention of Sev as a Death Eater, alleged or otherwise.

Sev-in-the-photograph scowled at her. The wind blew his hair into his eyes and he pushed it away with a huff. Lily smiled at him.

"I love you," she whispered, and photograph-Sev scowled deeper. Lily laughed.

She ripped the page from the newspaper and carried it up to her bedroom, where she used her wand to slice out the article and its accompanying picture. Sev regarded the proceedings with disapproval. She ignored him, the way she occasionally did his real-life counterpart.

Lily pulled out a photo album from underneath her mattress. It was mostly empty; she had bought it to track Harriet's growth, with the hope that maybe the war would end and the Order would win and she could sit down with Sev and show them everything about their child. But for now there was only the picture of Sev she had brought with her and a photograph Adelia had taken of Lily standing in the garden, her belly curving gently beneath her shirt.

She set Sev's Hogwart's announcement beneath his school picture, tapped it with her wand, and muttered an Afixment charm. Schoolboy Sev stumbled into the clearing and shouted something Lily couldn't hear. Teacher Sev gazed up at her, still scowling except for his eyes, which were soft and glittering.

"I know," Lily said, "You love me, too."

She lifted the album off her lap and kissed the photograph, her lips dry and chaste. But afterwards she drew a hot scented bath and locked the door with a complicated knot of spells and charms. She cast Sev's old Muffliato spell as well. Then she slipped beneath the water, her hand running up between her thighs, her thoughts all the way across the ocean.


	42. Snape

Severus sat near the head of a long black-glass table. He wore his Death Eater robes, and they seemed to have an affinity with whatever material that table had been constructed of. His sleeves clung to the tabletop whenever he leaned forward, the fabric whispering and sighing.

He wore his Death Eater mask as well. So did every other person in the room, save, of course, for the Dark Lord.

Severus had always thought of himself as highly ranked, having been initiated into the Inner Circle before any of his friends from Hogwarts. But he'd had no idea about the meetings the Dark Lord held for his spies. He'd no idea the Dark Lord had so  _many_  although, in truth, he hadn't given himself over to much thought on the matter.

This was his third meeting with this circle of followers, so secret it didn't even have a title. In addition to his mask, Severus wore a charm at the base of his throat that distorted his voice when he spoke. They all did.

The Dark Lord drew his spies together, as if he trusted them, and yet they remained anonymous throughout the meetings.

"Hello all," the Dark Lord said, settling into his chair at the head of the table, his hands folded over the tabletop. "I have some excellent news."

The spies didn't make a sound.

"We have infiltrated the Department of Magical Law Enforcement," he said, and his face cracked into one of its cruel, glittering smiles.

A soft, distorted murmur drifted up from around the table. Severus didn't move, didn't speak. He merely remembered.

"MLE," the Dark Lord said, turning his head toward the Death Eater sitting to his right. The spy lifted his hand, dropped it. His mask was as flat and pale as all the others.

"This brings us closer to our goals," the Dark Lord continued. "Department of Mysteries, Control of Magical Creatures, Department of Magical Transportation." He smiled at each one in turn, and they shifted in their seats. "You're doing most excellent work. But to take the MLE, and as deeply as we have - " The Dark Lord smiled. "I should allow MLE to speak, shouldn't I?"

He turned to the spy, who stood up. HIs voice came out deep and guttural. The charm at his neck glowed green. "We have secured positions at the top of the ranks. All Death Eaters. We are slowly working our way through the Aurors, removing certain unsavory - elements. It's been remarkably easy to sway allegiance to our cause. A testament to the Dark Lord's power."

He bowed, and the Dark Lord smiled again.

The rest of the meeting proceeded as the others had. Each spy stood up and shared the status of his mission. It was rather dull. Severus had to fight his own brain to keep from daydreaming about Lily.

All of the information reported - aside from the troubling MLE infiltration - was either inconsequential, or material that Severus had already taken to Dumbledore. When it came his turn to speak, he stood up, identified himself as Hogwarts, and said, his voice blank with Occlumency:

"The Opposition has been setting up bases of operation across the south. I'm working to earn the trust of one of Dumbledore's men - he's notoriously chatty and I should have the information within a few days."

All a lie, of course, with a few false memories to support it. The Dark Lord nodded his approval, and Severus sat down, burying his hands in the folds of his robe.

He felt cold.

* * *

Severus sat with Dumbledore in Order headquarters. It was becoming a routine, these meetings: the tea and biscuits, the shimmer on the walls.

A day had passed since the meeting; Severus was too wary to come straight to headquarters. He didn't trust the protection spells Dumbledore instructed him to use. They were too light, as airy and inconsequential as mist.

At least he didn't have to give anything up for them. That was something, he supposed.

"The Dark Lord's infiltrated the MLE," Severus said. "I mean You-Know-Who. Whatever. He has people in the MLE."

Dumbledore's face immediately went guarded, his eyes icing over.

"This is distressing news," Dumbledore said.

"That's why I'm telling you."

"How deep does the infiltration go?"

"Deep." And Severus told Dumbledore what the spy had told the Dark Lord. Dumbledore's eyes grew colder and colder the longer Severus spoke.

"Our operatives are in danger," Dumbledore said.

"I would guess so, yeah." Severus didn't care about any Order operatives except for Lily and himself. He leaned back in his chair and wished he could be back at his house, hunched over his caldron, not a Death Eater and not one of Dumbledore's men, either.

"I'll send the word out immediately." Dumbledore stood up, robes rustling, and moved toward the door. It was one of the shortest meetings they ever had - Severus thought about the cauldron steam on his face, calming him, relaxing him out of the knot of panic and anxiety of the last few days. But then Dumbledore stopped and turned.

"I'm sorry, Severus, I don't mean to leave so abruptly -"

"I don't give a shit."

"The information I gave you. For Voldemort. Was it accepted?"

Severus shrugged. "As readily as everything else. The problem's gonna come when he figures out it's not real." Severus' loosened Occlumency shields shuddered into place. He didn't want to think about that right now.

"I will keep you safe," Dumbledore said.

A bit of warmth slipped through his Severus's Occlumency. It coiled around his heart in a way that reminded him of Lily's touch. "Whatever," he sneered.

Dumbledore gave him a pleasant, albeit strained, smile, and stepped out into the hallway.

Severus sighed. Off he went, to save his precious Gryffindors. Severus stood up, stretched, plucked a stack of biscuits off the platter: they were iced with raspberry cream, his favorite. He wrapped them in one of Dumbledore's cloth napkins and stuck them in the pocket of his robe, then headed over to the fireplace burning low and orange. Dumbledore required him to travel by to and from headquarters now. He said it was to keep Severus' identity as a spy secret from the Dark Lord, which Severus was rather grateful for even though he'd let himself be struck down his own Dark curses before he ever said that aloud - but he doubted any Order members would be too keen on seeing a Slytherin wandering the hallways of their beloved Headquarters anyway. He was too dangerous and slippery, a snake in the grass.

Severus tossed the Floo power into the flames' soft glow. Fifteen seconds later, he dropped into his own familiar living room, dim from the drawn curtains, heavy with Dark protective magic. Severus dusted the Floo powder and ash off his robes. Clouds of drifted up toward the ceiling. He hated traveling by Floo.

_Severus_.

Severus had his wand in hand faster than a blink; his muscles knotted and tensed, and his own Atra Dolor waited on his tongue. He whirled around.

It was only Dumbledore's fucking Patronus.

"Oh," he said. "You again."

The phoenix flapped up into the air, green light streaming through its wings.  _Your protection spells -_

"I know, I know. Dark magic, dangerous to me. I don't give a fuck. What do you want?" Severus had to come to think of Dumbledore's Patronus not as an extension of Dumbledore himself, but as a toadie Dumbledore sent around to do his bidding.

The phoenix twisted up its narrow bird's face into an expression approximating concern.  _I worry about you, Severus. That's the only reason I say anything_.

There was that twist of warmth again. It pissed Severus off. He drew up his shields and let the blankness settle over him.

"Why are you here?" Severus asked. "To chide me about using Dark magic like I'm some idiot schoolboy?"

_No, Severus. In my rush to warn the others about the infiltration, I forgot to tell you - Slughorn has cleared his offices at Hogwarts. You are free to move in whenever you are ready._

Even in the absence of emotion brought on by his Occlumency, Severus felt a rush of something, too visceral to be blocked by the the shields. Hogwarts.

_You don't have to move in right away, of course - some of the professors stay over the summer, but it's by no means a requirement. Still, you'll want to give yourself time to set up, so I wouldn't suggest delaying too long -_

"Right," Severus snapped. He hadn't thought much about his appointment at Hogwarts beyond the work he would be doing as a spy. It hadn't really occurred to him that he would be leaving this house, this house where his father screamed and drank and his mother didn't do much of anything, for Hogwarts, which had been his home for seven years.

Certainly, his house had redeemed itself in recent months, all those memories of Lily crowding out the older, staler ones of his parents - but she would have imprinted on Hogwarts, too.

_I look forward to working with you,_  the phoenix said.

Severus scoffed. "I'm working for you," he said. "And I've already started."

The phoenix blinked at him.  _We'll be working together as colleagues_ , it said.  _Professor and headmaster_.

"Is it really that different from spy and headmaster?" Severus sneered. "I'll move into Hogwarts within the week. The Dark Lord will be glad to hear of it, no doubt. You'll need to devise some excellent lies, so I can show that I've been busy busy."

The phoenix stared at him and fluffed out its wings.

_Very well, Severus. I'll leave you to preparations_. There was a brief pause, and for a moment the phoenix's eyes seemed to twinkle.  _Enjoy the biscuits_.

"Oh, bloody hell!" Severus shouted. "How'd you know!" But the phoenix had already blinked out like a candle. Severus collapsed on the couch and pulled out the biscuits he'd stolen from Headquarters. One of them had broken into two pieces in the interim. He ate one of the halves and dropped the rest of the biscuits on the coffee table.

Back to Hogwarts. He wondered what it would be like, to step through those doors again. If he'd feel like he was coming home, the way he always did during the school year. That had never been about Lily. Lily was his light, but she wasn't the thing that distinguished Hogwarts from Spinner's End. It was that fucking castle, the cold stone walls and the tangled wilderness surrounding it and the  _magic_ , the magic so strong Severus could feel it vibrating inside his bones like a plucked string.

_The magic_ , Severus thought.  _That's what it was_. No where else in the world had magic like the magic at Hogwarts. It was wild and tumultuous, hormones and broken hearts and nights spent staying awake with your best mates so you could watch the sun creep up pale and slow over the horizon. And there were layers to it, centuries of teenagers finding out the truths about themselves. The magic built up like sediment until it was as thick and striated as limestone.

Even the Dark Lord couldn't approximate that sort of magic.

No wonder he wanted to take Hogwarts. Severus had always been curious. But he thought he understood now. There was too much love in the magic at Hogwarts. As long as it worked in opposition to the Dark Lord - and it did, with Dumbledore as headmaster - it would always be stronger than him.

_He wants to eat Hogwarts from the inside out_ , Severus thought. It made sense. Turn all that love into sacrifice, and you'd control Dark magic powerful enough to draw the life out of the Earth's soil.

A chill shivered down Severus's spine. He wondered why he had never realized it before. Maybe he hadn't cared. He hadn't cared about much those last few years, save for pleasing the Dark Lord.

Or maybe it was Lily. Maybe you had to understand love, truly understand it, before you could recognize when it was in danger.


	43. Lily

Lily walked along the beach, one hand resting distractedly against the swell of her belly. She had always enjoyed the walks, even though the solace made her think of Sev, which made her melancholy - but with the influx of Hogwarts students, she'd begun to treasure them. Without them, Lily was certain she would forget what silence sounded like.

Really, the students were not so bad. They were all orphans, as Elton Ruford had said, their parents killed during the early parts of the war, when Lily was still at Hogwarts. Their sorrow manifested in ways Lily found trying, despite her best intentions not to. The oldest were a pair of twins, a boy and girl named Toby and Meredith, sixteen and impossible, Lily thought, to manage, although Adelia could occasionally keep them in line. Then there was Charlotte, who was thirteen and wore heavy makeup around her eyes and trailed behind Meredith without speaking. The youngest was Daniel - he was twelve, and sometimes when he looked at her all Lily could see was Sev at that age, dark-eyed and wary. He would mind her: the only one, really, who would.

Lily was coming to realize she knew nothing about raising children.

The waves were choppy that morning, dark green-grey and tipped in white, and the air was chilly. Lily buttoned up her cardigan as far as she could; her belly poked out a little between the seam.

_Lily_.

Lily froze. It was Dumbledore's voice, distorted and distant. She could hear the faint hum of the Patronus charm.

"Is he all right?" Lily asked, her voice as brittle as seashells.

_Yes. I spoke with him this morning_.

Lily let out a long breath, then turned to face Dumbledore's Patronus.

"I hadn't heard from you," she said. "I thought -"

_I'm keeping him safe, Lily. I promise._

"Thank you," Lily's voice trembled and the tears in her eyes shattered the world into pieces, like reflections in a broken mirror. She blinked and wiped them away. "Thank you so much, Albus you've no idea what it means to me -"

_I know what it's like to love someone_. The phoenix seemed to smile, even though it couldn't really, not with its sharp pointed beak.  _I'm afraid I do have some distressing news, however, that does not involve our mutual friend_.

Lily nodded at him to go on.

_Voldemort has infiltrated the MLE._

Her stomach turned to stone. "What?" She slapped her hand over her mouth. "No, it can't - I just spoke with them the other day - oh God, what if I told them -"

The phoenix fluttered over to her and wrapped one of its wings around her shoulders. It couldn't really touch her, of course, but the gesture melted still some of her panic away. He _was the one who told us_ , the phoenix said.  _It seems Voldemort's spy there is a recent addition. We're already taking steps to counteract the effects. Please don't cease your communication with the Ministry -_

"Of course not," Lily murmured. "It would be too suspicious."  _You're thinking like Sev_. The thought made her smile, briefly.

_Yes. Keep you communication terse and vague. Don't give yourself away. I'll also need you to prepare false portkeys for distribution amongst MLE agents whose alliance is not confirmed._ The phoenix paused.  _I'm afraid this will probably give you the reputation of being a bit of a bungler, though you may find that working to your advantage_.

Lily nodded. Her brain was still stuck on the fact that You-Know-Who had finally worked his way into the MLE. And Sev had been the one to find out. Sev -

She dropped her hands to her belly again, and this time, she felt the baby moving inside her.

"Oh," she said.

The Patronus blinked.  _Lily? Are you all right? I know this is upsetting, but we found out early enough that damage should be minimized_.

"It's not -" Lily stretched her fingers over her stomach, waiting for it to happen again, that tiny fluttering like the heart of a bird. "Albus, she's moving!"

The Patronus seemed to glow a little brighter, out there in the grey beach sunlight.  _It's funny how the world works, isn't it_? It said.  _How terrible news is always paired with the best_.

Lily smiled. She was starting to think she had imagined it, that movement - but no, there it was again. She laughed. But only for a second. This was not a time for laughing.

"I'm sorry," she said.

_There's nothing to apologize for._

Lily bit her bottom lip. "I know you have so much to worry about right now," she said. "And of course Order business is always more important, but - "

_Of course I'll tell him_ , the phoenix said.

"Thank you." Her voice came out as a whisper, hardly louder than the soft roar of the ocean. She wished Sev could put his hand on her stomach and feel their child moving against her skin. Instead, he was learning that You-Know-Who had almost taken the Ministry completely. And he was saving them, saving the whole Order. What would have happened without that information? How long would they have continued to work with the MLE? Lily didn't want to think about it.

"Thank you," she said again.

The Patronus lit up so brightly that Lily had to blink.

_I'll tell him right now_ , he said.

* * *

Lily spoke to Elton Ruford again three days later. She was sitting in her office, flipping through the  _Prophet,_ looking for information about Death Eaters, about spies, about Sev, when she heard the crackling buzz of the fireplace.

"Lily!" Ruford said, his voice hissing and popping with the embers. "How are the children?"

Lily set her newspaper down and slowly rotated in her chair. There he was, same as always, his face glowing and molten. Everyone looked the same in the fireplace.

"They're fine," she said, her heart beating too fast, her breath coming up short and tight. He could probably tell that she was lying, that she was panicking -

_Think like Sev_ , she told herself.  _Be like Sev_.

"Not giving you any trouble, I hope?" Ruford asked.

"A little." Lily smiled. "Nothing we can't handle."

"Have any of them spoke about their parents?"

Lily paused. Ruford gazed up at her through the grating. He'd never asked this question before, and Lily thought she heard a shift in his voice, a forced airiness that made her suspicious.

"No," he said. "I get the feeling they'd prefer not to think about it."

She thought her own voice sounded strained, and she knew she kept messing with the hem of her dress, but Ruford only looked vaguely disappointed and said, "Oh. Well, I guess that's good, then."

Lily didn't say anything.

"When will the next batch of portkeys be ready? I'll be sending over my best man."

_Like hell you are_.  _Alice Longbottom gets these. Nobody else._

"Friday," she said, forcing herself to smile again. "As always."

"Ah! Excellent news." The fireplace sputtered. "Well, that's all I had for you. Please, Lily, don't hesitate to call me if anything - comes up."

He'd never said that before, either.

"Of course." Another smile. Ruford disappeared into a shower of smoke and magic.

Lily gasped and slumped over her desk. She didn't think the human heart could beat so fast. The entire world seemed to have fallen away; it was just her and her heart and her panic. Had she held it in? Ruford hadn't seemed suspicious of her. Something was different with him, but he hadn't seemed to realize that something was different with  _her_.

Somebody knocked on the door of her office.

Lily screeched, the slight surprise magnified by her adrenaline. Whoever it was didn't say anything. "Come in," she choked out.

The door cracked open, and Daniel appeared, his eyes big and dark. "Miss Lily?" he said. "Adelia said to come get you."

Lily leaned back in her chair and pressed one hand to her forehead.

"She said to tell you to come right away or else I'm gonna get in trouble."

"She said nothing of the kind," Lily told him. He gave her a dark, mischievous smile, and her heart flipped around in her chest.  _Sev_. She wondered if Harriet would smile like that whenever she was lying.

"But I'll still come down with you." Lily stood up. She didn't want to be in the office right now, not after that unsettling conversation with Elton Ruford.

Daniel led her down the stairs as if she didn't know the way. He took her into the dining room. Toby and Meredith were sitting at the table like a pair of prisoners. Adelia towered over them, her arms crossed over her chest, her scar pale and menacing in the angry lines of her face.

"I learned something unfortunate about our two guests," Adelia said. Meredith scowled at her, although Toby hung his head, looking ashamed. Lily assumed his shame was probably faked. "I thought you should hear it."

_Me?_ Those kids didn't care what Lily thought about them. She was too close in age, and she was too kind-hearted. But she straightened her shoulders and tried her best to look tough.

"It seems they've discovered the Ministry of Magic doesn't trace underage magic in foreign countries." Lily froze; that wasn't true, was it? This was You-Know-Who - his infiltration. "And they've chosen to abuse this fact."

Daniel was still in the room, Lily realized, standing beside her, hunching a little the way Sev always had.

"Daniel," Adelia said. "Why don't you tell Miss Lily about it."

He glanced at her, dark hair hanging into his eyes. "They hexed me."

No dark smile. He was telling the truth.

Lily thought about Hogwarts, James and Sirius hurling magic at Sev like punches. He still cried over it when he was twelve; she used to find him in the library afterwards, deep in the stacks where no one else could find them, and hold him until his tears dried up.

"I won't allow that in this house," Lily said.

"We weren't in the house," said Meredith. "We were on the beach."

"You were within the perimeters of the wards." Lily's anger surged. "Which means you were under my protection. If you're so keen on bullying Daniel, or anyone else, you can leave my protection and do what you like in Angua Beach. But don't expect me to help you when the Death Eaters show up." Was that the right thing to say? From the expression on Adelia's face, probably not.

"You can't do that!" Meredith shrieked.

"My house, my rules." She jabbed her finger toward the kitchen. "You'll both take on Daniel's chores for the next two weeks."

"What!" cried Toby. "I didn't even want to do it!"

"But you did," said Adelia. "I saw you. Saw both of you."

"There's a stack of dishes in the kitchen," LIly said. "Don't even think about using magic."

Meredith scowled at her.

"I will take your wands away."

That got them. Meredith paled; Toby's eyes narrowed into two furious slits. Lily knew their wands would be the only things that stood between them if Death Eaters really did come to the house, and she had no intention of actually taking them away. She was still willing to threaten it, though.

"Up, both of you," Adelia said, in her sharp schoolmaster's voice, the one Lily doubted she'd ever be able to master. Adelia corralled the two of them out of the dining room - Toby slinking and shuffling, Meredith glaring at Lily in a weak approximation of Lily's own Sev-learned glares. When they were gone, Lily turned to Daniel. His eyes seemed too big for his face.

"What did they do to you?" she said softly.

Daniel shrugged. "This hex that all the older kids know." He looked down at his feet. "They all use it at school."

_Some things never change._ "It was like that when I went to Hogwarts, too," Lily said. "We had a couple that went around. I hated all of them."

Daniel kept staring at his feet. "I wasn't gonna tell on them," he said. "At school, you can tell the teachers all you want but they never do anything, and then the other kids just hex you worse. But Miss Adelia came out when they had me dangling upside down -"

_Jesus_ , Lily thought.  _They can't even come up with new spells_.

"And she stopped them." Daniel looked up at her, eyes imploring. "Don't make them do my chores, please? They're just gonna hex me worse soon as we're alone, and I -"

Lily held up one hand. "I can't do that, Daniel." But then she bent down so that she was eye-level with him - he was small of his age - and said, "If they hex you again, come and tell me."

Daniel opened his mouth to protest.

"I just want to know," LIly said. "And I'll show you something you can use to defend yourself, okay?"

His eyes went wide. "You can do that?"

Lily nodded. She straightened up and gave a Daniel a quick hug. His body seemed to retract, curling in on itself, but she just squeezed him tighter.

"Why don't you go up to my room for a little while," Lily said. "You can take one of your books and no one'll bother you for the rest of the afternoon."

Daniel didn't think her, didn't say anything at all, in fact, but when he scurried out of the room his steps seemed lighter.

Lily wished she could have a cigarette.

She went outside instead, out to the garden, the plants all heavy with blossoms that would eventually turn into food and potion ingredients. Adelia was rummaging around in the vegetable patch, pulling out weeds and running her hands over the tops of the carrots. Working by hand. She'd picked up the habit from Lily.

"I handled that terribly," Lily said.

Adelia glanced up at her and squinted into the sunlight. "They'll get over it."

"I'm not really going to take their wands away."

"I know." Adelia yanked out a clump of weeds and tossed then into the sand surrounding the garden. "Look, you're going to fuck up sometimes. It's okay. As long as you know you fucked up, and work to fix it -" she shrugged. "All you can do, really."

Lily sat down in the middle of the squash plants, curling low and fragrant over the soil. "I hate bullies," she said.

Adelia peered up at her. "I could tell."

"And then this business with the trace not working -" Lily pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. Spots of light bloomed in the darkness. "It's not because we're in Ireland, is it?"

Adelia tugged on another weed. "No," she said, not looking at Lily. "But I don't imagine the children need to know that."

"You-Know-Who. Why would he -"

Adelia shrugged. "I don't know." She tossed the weeds out into the sand. "So all his Death Eaters' spawn can go wreck havoc during the summer, I suppose."

Lily leaned back, the squash plants tickling through the fabric of her dress. Adelia was probably right. She wondered how long until people realized. Would they tie it to You-Know-Who? Maybe. Probably. And perhaps that's why he did it: a calling card. A way of saying,  _Yes, I'm here_ ,  _and there's nothing any of you can do about it_.

The sun was warm and the air was cool and smelled of dirt and growing things. Lily felt a faint ripple inside her womb. In a few months Harriet would be born, and Lily would have a little piece of Sev that she could hold in her arms. It was almost impossible to believe that this world, with its lemony sunlight and spring garden, was the same one in which the cruelest wizard in the history of Britain had taken the Ministry of Magic.

"Help me with the weeds," Adelia said, her voice hard, like she knew what Lily had been thinking.

And Lily did. It helped, a little.


	44. Snape

Two weeks before the school year was scheduled to begin, Horace Slughorn stopped by for a visit.

"Severus, my boy!" he cried out when Severus pulled open the door to his office. "How are you doing? Albus asked me to stop by, see if you needed any help -"

Severus rather doubted that, but he pulled the door open a little wider anyway, and stepped aside so Slughorn could come in. He gazed around the office, blinking and frowning a little.

"Decided not to bother much with decorating, I see." Slughorn gave Severus a smile, bright and fake. "Too busy mixing draughts, I imagine."

Severus scowled. Slughorn had always kept the office stuffed with expensive-but-faded furniture, Severus remembered, and all the trinkets and photographs of his star students. It had still been an office in a dungeon.

All Severus cared about were his books and his potions ingredients, and he had both in the office now.

"If you keep the fire lit, it won't get so  _damp_  in here." Slughorn gave a fake little shiver then pulled out his wand. "May I?"

"Fine." Severus waved his hand dismissively. God, why did Dumbledore have to let Sluggy back in the castle? The man was supposed to be retired, for fuck's sake.

Fire erupted behind the grating. Severus sat down behind his desk and closed the seventh-year textbook he'd been flipping through.

"Ah, planning out your lessons!" Slughorn settled himself down in the chair across from the desk.

Severus was doing no such thing - he hadn't written a single lesson at all, in fact, but he still nodded and said, "Yes, and it seems you've interrupted my work. What do you want?"

Slughorn blinked. Severus smirked.  _Not going to suck up to you now, Horace my boy_ , he thought.

Slughorn's face rearranged itself into an expression of feigned politeness; Severus could read right through it, of course, because it was a classic Slytherin expression, one the students turned on the other teachers when they wanted to get their way.

"Oh, I just wanted to see how you were settling in," he said. "If you needed any help, any pointers - it's  _grand_ , teaching is. I think you'll rather like it."

Severus stared at him.

Slughorn shifted in his seat, robes rippling, and looked away. Sweat glistened in tiny drops on his brow. "Well, I'll imagine you'll have no trouble getting them to obey," Slughorn said, tittering nervously.

Severus said nothing.

"And I brought you some of my old notes," Slughorn added, recovering a little. He reached into his robes and pulled out several thick scrolls, all tied together with green-and-silver ribbon, and set them on the desk. "It gets overwhelming once the school year starts up, having to plan for all those classes - you might find these useful."

Severus looked at the scrolls for a few seconds, before reaching over to pluck one out of the package. The parchment was thin and worn and almost crumbly. When he unrolled it, the words  _Notes for Third Years_ were scrawled across the top in Slughorn's looping, bombastic hand.

This might be useful. Even Severus had to begrudgingly admit that.

"Ah, you like what you see?" Slughorn had recovered from Severus's Death Eater stare, it seemed. He gave Severus a wink. "You take them, use what you need."

_And then when you need a favor you'll be back in my office, and protocol will dictate that I have to say yes_. But Severus scooped up the parchments anyway and deposited them in the top shelf of his desk. Slughorn beamed. The old man collected favors the way old women collected china. Maybe he'd never call the favor in; maybe he wouldn't be able to stand the thought of losing one from his collection. Severus could be so lucky.

"Well, I hate to keep you from your work," Slughorn said, heaving himself out of the chair.

_Got what he came for_ , Severus thought. Although at least Slughorn was innocuous. It wasn't like swapping favors with the Dark Lord.

Which Severus had also done.

"Feel free to call me if you have any trouble. Albus has the fireplace." Slughorn smiled again, although this time the smile was genuine. "Best of luck to you, Severus. I've always admired your talent."

"Thank you," Severus said, keeping his voice edged in ice.

Slughorn faltered for a second, but recovered quickly enough. Someone else might not have noticed. Severus did, because Severus had spent the last couple of years on the look out for those lapses in confidence, and now more than ever he thought it was important that he think like a Death Eater.

Slughorn gave one last rueful glance at his old office and stepped out into the hallway. Severus slammed the door shut behind him and locked it, then wandered back over to his desk and collapsed in his chair. Maybe he should write some lesson plans. Come up with some assignments. He doubted very seriously the students wouldn't actually  _learn_  anything - they certainly hadn't when he was in school, all of them too concerned with Quidditch and getting into one another's knickers than studying - but it occurred to Severus that if the students were busy, they would be much less likely to turn their youthful ire toward him. The worst thing about Hogwarts had always been the pranks, and he would go back to the Dark Lord before he let one of the little shits prank him now, as an adult.

Severus pulled out Slughorn's first-year scroll and began to work.

* * *

On the first day of classes, the sky was that bright autumn blue, and the courtyard of the castle was warm and sunny and full of students. Severus scowled at them as he walked from breakfast to his first class of the day - third-years, Slytherins and Gryffindors thrown together they way they'd done it when he was in school. He kept his wand in his sleeve, as wary as if he were creeping into battle for the Dark Lord.

The students stared, but no one called him  _Snivellus_ or tried to cast a hex on him. He didn't let himself relax.

He strode into the Potions lab, robes flapping around his ankles. The third years were all at their desks, chatting and and laughing and sending paper cranes flapping through the air. Their voices dipped when he came into the room, but did not stop: he expected this. The Death Eaters had worked the same way. Severus, as an unknown element, was burdened with the onus of proof. He needed to show the little fuckers just how big a threat he was.

Severus snapped his wand out of his sleeve and pointed it at one of the paper cranes. Immediately, the crane erupted into flames that burned away into grey, smoldering ash.

The other five cranes in the room followed suit.

Silence crashed over the room like tsunami. Ash fluttered down over the students' desks, and when they stared at him with their wide, fearful eyes he felt a tickle of pleasure work through him. It was the same pleasure he used to get doing the Dark Lord's work, the pleasure of fear - but this was different. They weren't afraid for the lives, here. Merely their grades.

Severus slid his wand back into his sleeve.

"Open your textbooks to page fifteen," he said, using his Death Eater voice, icy and cruelly calm. "I don't imagine any of you could tell me what vervain is?"

Not a single hand went into the air.

Severus sneered. "You," he said, pointing to a thin, translucent little Gryffindor who trembled in the line of Severus's finger. "Did you do your reading over the summer?"

"Y - yes. Professor."

"Then you should be able to tell me what vervain is."

The boy went even paler. His eyelashes fluttered.

"Well?" Severus snapped.

"Is it a - a type of plant?"

The kid was guessing. Severus didn't need Legilimency to tell. "A plant, yes. And what potion is it used in?"

The boy gulped. Severus glared at him.

"The Sleeping Draught?"

"Wrong." Severus slammed his hand down on the boy's table. Thirty students jumped in the air. "Five points from Gryffindor for giving me the incorrect answer. Ten points for lying."

The boy squawked in protest. "I didn't lie."

"You told me you did your reading over the summer. If you had done your reading, you would have been able to answer the question. Ergo, you were lying."

"I just forgot!" the boy said, quietly but indignantly.

"Another ten points for talking back." Severus whipped away from the boy's desk and strode to the front of the room. He could feel his power crackling like an electrical current. Power over schoolchildren, the power to suck stones away from an enchanted hourglass. Well, it wasn't exactly what the Dark Lord had offered, but this way he didn't have to hurt anyone, he didn't have to look in their eyes as they lay dying.

"Vervain is indeed a plant," Severus said. "And it's the main ingredient in one of the simpler protection potions, which you will be brewing today." He plucked a clump of vervain off his desk and flicked it back and forth a few times. For effect. "Since this is your first day, I will walk you through the steps before requiring you to prepare it on your own. Do not expect such coddling in the future."

The students stared back at him, frozen and wide-eyed.

"I suggest you take notes."

Severus's voice had became a conduit of magic. It set all the classroom into motion. Students rifled through the bags, pulling out quills and parchment, the only sound the whisper of paper against wood.

_Here you are_ , Severus thought.  _A fucking schoolmaster_.

He hadn't been Occluding much - none of the little brats would be able to peer inside his head, and he liked having a reel of Lily playing constantly in the background of his thoughts - but the shields flew up then, at the idea that he had given up the Dark Lord to become a fucking professor. Even if it was at Hogwarts. He felt himself go dark. He wondered what it looked like to the students, all of them sitting out there blinking expectantly. He wondered if any of them even noticed. Maybe one or two of the Slytherins.

It didn't matter.

"Pay attention," Severus snapped, his voice even colder now that he was Occluding everything away. "This will be on the exam."

And with deft hands, he prepared the protection potion, something he hadn't done since he'd been a student, working beside Lily in the lab. The motions came to him easily, as easily as if he'd never left the school, as if he were thirteen years old again and could run out into the courtyard and find Lily waiting for him with a smile and a pack of stolen cigarettes.

He worked, the students watched, and that was how Severus Snape became a teacher.


	45. Lily

Autumn settled into Angua Beach like the spiders that had come to live in the corner of Lily's room, appearing overnight. One day it was summer, the days hot and bright, and the next it wasn't. The ocean roiled and churned. When the tide went out the beach was covered in dead jellyfish and seaweed.

For the first time since Lily's arrival, the safe house was empty. The children had gone back to school, and the Order was keeping its wounded in Britain, as close to Headquarters as they could. In case they were needed.

There was no one to go into hiding. Lily didn't know what to make of that, but it unnerved her.

She distracted herself by preparing for Harriet's arrival. Adelia had, of course, been taking care of all the medical concerns, but as the date approached she also seemed to fill the role the baby's father -  _Sev_  - would have taken, bringing Lily food whenever she was hungry and craving strange things, covering her with blankets when she was cold and yanking them away whenever she was hot. Lily appreciated it, deep down, beneath the layers of irrational emotion brought on by the pregnancy, but she still wished every day that it could be Sev bringing her bowls of ice cream as the flames licked away at the fireplace and the air turned cold and damp outside.

Sometimes Lily turned on Adelia and berated her for little things, stupid things, like not clearing out the garden fast enough. Adelia just smiled sweetly, wiped the dirt off her hands, and said, "It's only September. We have time, love." It was as if Lily's rage didn't even affect her. Sev would have berated right back, and eventually they wouldn't have been berating each other at all, just paying compliments that sounded like insults. And it made Lily miss him so much, even though she liked Adelia, and she appreciated Adelia's fake politeness. (It was certainly fake, Lily had determined that easily enough. She figured Adelia put it on because Lily was in the last stages of her pregnancy.)

And it made Lily heart ache to think that Sev wouldn't be able to hold her hand as she pushed Harriet out into the world, that he wouldn't be there to see Harriet's face for the first time. Once, in one of her weepier moods, she told Adelia about it. Adelia just laughed.

"Men can't handle babies," she said. "You'll think she's the most beautiful creature in the world, but he would just see a wrinkled up pink ball."

"That's not true," Lily said.

"I've seen enough newborns in my time," Adelia said. "I'll be thinking it too."

"But it's his baby!"

Adelia just shook her head. "It didn't come out of him."

"It did nine months ago."

Adelia laughed, and Lily did too, although later she thought about that time nine months ago - she put Harriet's conception at the night after the battle at Dankworth Manor - and her sorrow returned. She pulled out the photo album and stared at Sev's pictures, teenage Sev and adult Sev, and wondered what he was thinking.

_What do spies think about_? She thought, and then she decided they must not think about anything, because that was the only way to keep themselves safe.

She kissed each photograph in turn. The Sevs turned twin scowls her way.

"You two find me soppy, I know," she whispered. "But he's even soppier than me."

Adult Sev rolled his eyes and pushed his hair away from his face. Teenage Sev ducked back into the trees.

Lily still took her morning walks along the beach, despite the fact that her body had become a burden. The little flutters from the summer, those touches as soft and magical as butterfly wings, had transformed into an actual human being living inside her belly. Sometimes Lily could see the imprints of feet or hands on her stomach, little fists beating on her from the inside. She tried to imagine what Sev might have said if he saw:  _It appears you have a parasite living inside you. Perhaps we should consider surgery_.

Everything made her sad, it seemed.

One day in early October, she woke up before the sun rose. She lay in bed and stared at the shadows slipping across the wall like ink spills. Harriet squirmed around, and Lily rested her hand on her stomach so she could feel her moving beneath her fingers. "Soon," she whispered. "I'll let you out of that cage soon enough."

Harriet kicked in response, as if to say,  _I'll let my own damn self out_. Lily smiled. Sev would be proud.

She ate breakfast alone. Adelia always slept in, now that they didn't have any residents. Outside the wind rustled the vines growing dormant for the winter. If Lily listened hard enough she could hear the sea roaring in the background.

When she finished eating, she set her dishes to be Scourgified and then walked down to the beach. The waves were higher than usual, the foam glimmering pale pink from the line of sunlight edging along the horizon. Lily drew her sweater more tightly around her shoulders. She stared at the east and thought of Sev.

Warmth trickled down her legs.

She didn't know what it was at first. She cast Lumos and saw a dark spot in the sand, widening between her legs.

Pain shot through her womb.

_Harriet_ , she thought.

Lily cast her Patronus to wake up Adelia. Then she hobbled back through the dunes, stumbling over the loose dry sand. Dune vines reached out for her legs, and Lumos was hardly bright enough to guide her back to the beach house.

More pain. Lily cried out, nearly dropped her wand.

"Lily!"

Lily felt warm dry hands on her shoulders. She wished they belonged to Sev.

"My water broke," she said.

"I know, the doe told me. Come along, up to your room." Adelia had tossed a witch's robe over her nightgown, and she was barefoot despite the autumnal cold. "I'll get the pain potion, and you need to lie there and breathe." Adelia pushed into the house, and more pain stabbed through Lily's body. It didn't even seem to come from her womb anymore.

"It hurts," she said. "Is Harriet all right? Is everything all right?"

"Of course it hurts," Adelia said. "I told you it would. Come along."

She guided her up the stairs, Lumos still lighting their way. Neither of them had bothered to light the lamps.

Once they were in Lily's room, Lily stumbled over to her bed and collapsed across the mattress. More pain. She was supposed to be counting, wasn't she? She tried to number off in her head, but then Adelia said, "Get comfortable. I'll be right back," and Lily lost count.

Lily pushed herself off the bed so she could pull the photo album out of her dresser drawer. The two Sevs seemed to know what was happening. Teenage Sev was shouting at the Lily who had taken the picture, ranting and screaming the way he did whenever he was scared, but adult Sev was actually pacing back and forth, like a father on the telly.

Lily smiled. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

Then another burst of pain, and Lily almost dropped the photo album.

She crawled back into bed, kicked off her shoes, propped the album up on the nightstand so the two Sevs could watch. It was the closest she was going to get to having him with her, holding her hand and telling her everything would be all right. No - that wasn't true. He would've held her hand and barked insults at Adelia.

More pain, and this time Lily was able to count. Adelia stepped back into the room, potion bottle levitating behind her.

"How're we doing?" she asked, sliding a chair into place alongside the bed.

"It hurts," Lily said.

"I know it does, love. Remember your breathing." Adelia pushed Lily's dress up around waist and pulled off her underpants. Lily sucked in breaths the way she'd practiced every evening that summer, out on the back porch. Adelia lay her wand against Lily's stomach and tilted her head forward, listening. Then her face broke into a smile.

"Ahh, everything's coming along beautifully. This'll be an easy one." She smoothed Lily's hair away from her forehead. "Little Harriet wants to be born, I think."

Lily screamed in response, another contraction wracking her system.

"Remember to breathe," Adelia said.

Lily breathed.

"Now what?" she asked, gasping.

"We wait." Adelia smiled. "Should't be long, though. Like I said, this baby wants to be born." She handed Lily a bottle of pain potion. "Drink up."

It felt like hours. The contractions came more frequently, and Lily breathed and stared up at the ceiling. The Sevs raged in the photographs.

"Ah, there she is," Adelia said, as if they'd been waiting for a friend in the park. "Like I said, not long at all."

"What?" Lily tried to sit up; pain washed over her. Adelia nudged her back down by the shoulder.

"Just the top of her head." Adelia cast a monitoring spell over the bed. It hung like a net of light, casting the room in an eerie amber glow. Lily screamed. Adelia gave her another dose of pain potion.

"Push, love," said Adelia, so infuriatingly  _calm_. Lily screamed again. The pain potion didn't dull everything away; it still hurt, she just didn't feel like she was being ripped in half. Everything below her legs felt far away.

The room was too hot. Lily was drenched in sweat. She saw spots of light ringing around the room.

And then she heard it, the wailing of a baby.

"Told you it wouldn't take long," Adelia said. She flicked her wand and Lily felt something sever inside of her. It didn't hurt. It was just a broken connection. Lily tried to push herself up.

"I want - can I see her -" Her voice sounded strange, raspy like she'd had sore throat. Adelia didn't answer, just brought over a bundle of blankets and set it in Lily's arms.

Harriet.

Her face was scrunched up and red, her skin damp and sticky. She screamed like she hated the world, and that reminded Lily of Sev, raging because he was afraid. She pressed Harriet against her chest. Adelia was right; Harriet was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. Lily wandered Sev would say if he were here: something about Harriet resembling wet laundry, maybe. But he wouldn't mean it. He would think she was beautiful too.

Lily kissed Harriet's forehead. She was still wailing. Lily didn't care. She slumped back against the headboard, exhausted and full of love, while the sun rose outside the safe house, flooding the world with light.


	46. Snape

Severus was marking essays when someone knocked on his office door. He didn't answer right away; his students, he'd learned quickly enough, had a habit of  _needing_  him for things. He was doing his best to discourage this habit.

The knocking continued. Severus hurled down his quill in disgust. "What do you want?" he called. "It's Saturday morning. Surely you could find it in yourselves to  _sleep in_." As he spoke, he stalked across the room and yanked the door open.

Dumbledore blinked back at him.

"I don't make a habit of sleeping late, I'm afraid," Dumbledore said. "It can cause one to miss things."

Severus scowled. "You know there hasn't been anything new to report."

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "Ah, but I'm afraid there is. On my end, anyway."

Severus froze. "Lily," he whispered. "Oh God, did she -"

"Thirty minutes ago."

Lily stared at Dumbledore, not sure how to react, not sure how much to let the old man see.

"The baby's healthy," he said. "And Lily's fine."

Severus nodded without speaking.

"I thought you'd like to hear the good news. I asked Adelia to send over an owl with a photograph." Dumbledore's eyes twinkled again. "I love babies. Don't you, Severus?"

"I've never known any," Severus said stiffly. Then: "Thank you. For the, ah, for the photograph."

Dumbledore smiled. "Of course." Then he nodded. "I'll leave you to your marking. Have a good afternoon, Severus."

The door swung shut behind him, and Severus stood in his empty office, his thoughts racing.

He let down the Occlumency. He let down all of it.  _Lily had our baby. She had Harriet_. The thought struck him through the heart, and he trembled in place. His emotions were coursing through him, and the usual ones, the anger and bitterness and the loneliness, were all drowned out by a perfect, crystalline joy that threatened to consume him.

Severus collapsed in his chair, knocking all those terrible student essays to the floor.

He had first learned the trick of Occlumency when he was thirteen. He used to cry over anything, over every little insult hurled at him by Potter and Black. When they pranked him, Severus cried. When Potter tried to cozy up to Lily, even though she always spurned him, Severus cried. And so he learned Occlumency, he cut all those emotions off from himself, so he would stop crying.

It worked. With the exception of that night in Lily's flat, he hadn't cried since.

But knowing that somewhere in the world was Lily and their baby, their Harriet, Severus felt that familiar prickle at the back of his eyes. Tears threaded through his eyelashes, turning the world to liquid. The joy of his daughter's birth was too big.

He wept.

It wasn't like before, a few wayward tears that escaped despite his carefully constructed walls. It wasn't even like it had been in school. Severus had never cried out of happiness before. He didn't think it was possible.

He wished he could have been there. He wished he could have watched Harriet come into the world. He would never tell this to anyone, not even Lily - Lily would know anyway, she always did - but he told it to himself, and he let himself  _know_ it without the Occlumency getting in his way.

Later, he would rebuilt the walls, he would tuck this memory away for safe-keeping. But right now he let himself feel it, and that joy was as soft and warm as Lily's touch.


	47. Snape

**One Year Later**

The Dark Lord held his meetings at the Ministry of Magic now.

Severus still hadn't adjusted to the new meeting room, with its beat-up old table and the yellowish flicker of the cheap lamps lining the walls. There used to be a trio of filing cabinets in the corner that rattled and hissed whenever the Death Eater spies filled the room. The Dark Lord always ignored them, but one day, about two months after they had taken the Ministry, Severus arrived for a meeting, and the filing cabinets were gone.

Severus halfway missed the filing cabinets now. He would've liked something to fill up the horrible silence currently pervading through the meeting room.

"This is most disquieting," the Dark Lord said, pressing his wand between the palms of his hands. "How long have you known?"

"No long, my Lord." The Death Eater was tall and wide, and that was all Severus could tell about him. His robes whispered across the table; _this_ table didn't have an affinity for the material, the way the last one did. This table was mere wood. "My contact gave me the witch's name - she hadn't sent the prophecy for storage at the Ministry."

"Dumbledore," Voldemort hissed.

The Death Eater hesitated. "If I may, my Lord -"

The Dark Lord fixed him with a cold, eerie stare. Severus felt his walls tighten. "What is it, Prophecies?"

"It wasn't Dumbledore. We looked into that immediately. The witch knew him when she was at Hogwarts, but otherwise hasn't seen him in nearly five years -"

Severus's mind silently recorded the information, tucking it away behind his Occlumency.

"- She fled the country when she heard we were coming, taking the prophecy with her. Seems she knew it was dangerous. Couldn't imagine why." The Death Eater chuckled, and it came out sounding like a death rattle through the Distortion Charm at his throat. The Dark Lord did not so much as suggest a smile. "We tracked it, of course. Hard to run off with a prophecy, 'specially one as big as that."

"Did you get the witch?" the Dark Lord asked.

Another hesitation, this one longer.

"Tell me," the Dark Lord said. "I would like to hear you say it."

"No, my Lord." The Death Eater trembled, his robes fluttering like butterfly wings. "We almost did, but she managed to -"

" _Crucio_ ," the Dark Lord said, boredly flicking his wind. The Death Eater screamed and crashed to the floor, knocking over a chair with a clatter. No one else moved.

"You should never let your subjects away from you," the Dark Lord said to the rest of the spies. "It creates cracks in our regime. Most of the wizarding world remains neutral, did your realize? They do not fight for the Opposition, they do not fight for me. But things like this, letting a witch loose when we've stolen her prophecy - that's the sort of thing that creates soldiers. And not for our side."

He waved his wand again, and the Death Eater's screams fell away. Severus could hear the Death Eater panting and gasping for breath.

"Stand up," the Dark Lord said, "And tell us what the prophecy foretold."

The Death Eater's hand crept up to the tabletop, the skin of his fingers white and translucent enough that his veins showed through, dark with Cruciated blood. No one spoke, no one moved. They simply sat and waited.

The Dark Lord leaned back in his chair, wand still out, his expression calm and patient.

The Death Eater pushed himself up. His mask was askew, revealing a jawline with a few days' growth of beard. He pushed the mask back into place and stood for a moment, swaying.

"Go on," the Dark Lord said. "You told me there was more."

"There is, my Lord." The Death Eater's voice rasped. The Cruciatus damaged nerve endings, although the damage didn't last longer than about an hour or so. Severus had never experienced it himself - much to his amazement, considering all the bad information he'd fed the Dark Lord over the past year - but he had seen it performed innumerable times.

He had performed it himself, as well.

"It gave details," the Death Eater said. He wobbled to the side and leaned his hand down on the table, steadying himself. "About the boy who -"

"Yes," the Dark Lord snapped. "Let's hear them."

_The boy who would defeat you_ , thought Snape, before his Occlumency slammed down on his thoughts. At least Harriet was girl. The prophecy could never refer to her.

"He was born this past July," the Death Eater said. "The prophecy was about his birth. She'd been keeping it secret all this time -"

"Did she give a name?" the Dark Lord hissed.

The Death Eater shook his head.

"Then I imagine we will have to investigate every boy born the month of July," the Dark Lord said. He fingered his wand. The Death Eater took a step backwards.

"There was more," he said.

"Then let's hear it."

"The prophecy, it said - it said his parents had defied you three times."

"Many have defied me three time."

"And they're still alive," the Death Eater said in a quiet scared voice.

Silence settled thick and dark over the room. Severus recorded it all without reaction.  _Harriet is a girl. Harriet was born in October. Harriet is safe._ Then the Occlumency closed around even that, and Severus sat in his own emptiness.

The Dark Lord smiled. "Ah," he said. "They're still alive." He traced his wand in circles over his palm. "That, I believe, narrows it down. Thank you, Prophecies."

The Death Eater bowed, his body still shaking. The Dark Lord walked the perimeter of the room, still toying with his wand. Severus knew he was thinking.

He stopped, turned to the rest of the spies, and his eyes glowed green and red.

"Frank and Alice Longbottom," he said. "There may be one other couple, but they stand out the most. Aurors, the both of them. I met them together at the Battle of Corominas. And separately on other occasions." He didn't elaborate. Then: "Hogwarts."

"Yes, my Lord?" said Severus.

"Speak with Dumbledore about this matter. Surely the old man knows more than he's letting on. I imagine the subject of the prophecy will come up in his quarters." The Dark Lord curled up his lip. "Do you  _understand_?"

"Of course, my lord," Severus said.

When he bowed his head, low and respectful, he could feel the weight of the information from that meeting rattling around inside his thoughts.


	48. Snape

"Are you certain?" Dumbledore asked.

"Of course I'm certain," Severus snapped. "I was bloody well there, wasn't I?"

Dumbledore gave him one of his Looks, which Severus had become more adept at deciphering over the past year. On the surface the Looks were nearly all that same, an expression of calm blue-eyed beatitude, but if you knew where to look - at the lines crinkling around his nose and fanning out from the edge of his eyes, at the set of his mouth - you could read them completely. It was, Severus had decided, a form of Occlumency on Dumbledore's part. Which made Severus's ability to read those Looks a form of Legilimency, he supposed.

Right now, Dumbledore looked hopeful. Severus wanted to hex him.

"The witch who made the prophecy tried to keep it a secret," Severus went on. "But You-Know-Who has been tracking prophecies for years - even I knew about it, before. There just never was anything." He scowled. "Now there is."

"This is excellent news," Dumbledore said. "You realize that, don't you?"

"Excellent?" said Snape. "It would be excellent news if that crackpot had brought the prophecy to you instead of trying to bury it in her garden. You-Know-Who's going to kill the boy, and we'll all be fucked."

"Language," Dumbledore said automatically, as if Severus were a student. Severus sneered at him.

"And Voldemort does not yet know who the prophecy refers to?"

"He suspects it's the Longbottoms."

Dumbledore blinked, his expression flickering. Severus still loved catching Dumbledore unawares, although tonight it lacked the usual appeal.

"But he doesn't know for certain?"

"They meet the criteria," Severus said. He did not mention that he had volunteered some of that information, a few months earlier, when reporting on the affairs of the Orders. He had told the Dark Lord about the Longbottom's son. There was still time, he supposed, he  _hoped_ , to rectify that mistake.

Dumbledore leaned back in his chair. "Yes," he said. "I suppose they do." He fingered the end of his beard.

"I presume you're going to hide them."

"Of course." Dumbledore gazed at the one of the sleeping portraits. The silencing shield was in place, and the dead headmasters had long since stopped trying to listen in.

"Do you think that'll be enough?"

"It's been enough for Lily," Dumbledore said.

Rage flared up inside Severus's heart, bright and irrational and fast-burning.  _Don't bring her into this_ , he wanted to scream. But some part of him knew that anger was with himself, for telling the Dark Lord about the Longbottom's little brat, for putting her in even more danger.

"The Dark Lord," Severus said, "is not looking for Lily."

Dumbledore gazed at him.

"You should let me find something, some counter-spell," Severus said. "Hide them, of course, but You-Know-Who will be using Dark magic, and we have to respond in kind -"

Dumbledore jerked up his hand. "Enough," he said. "Severus, we must not use the Dark Arts for this. It will only draw Voldemort's attention - "

"His attention has already been drawn!" shouted Severus. "He already knows about the Longbottom boy, he's already  _decided_ , and if his tracking spells are able to break through your concealment, everything will be lost."  _Lily will be lost. Harriet. They are everything_.

"He won't break through the Concealment Charm," Dumbledore said. "The magic is some of the strongest that I know. We've been using it for years, since you were only a student -"

Severus stood up, pushing his chair back. The portraits stirred. "Don't condescend to me," he snarled. "You haven't had the Dark Lord sift through your thoughts. You don't attend his meetings as a spy. Your arm doesn't  _burn_ every time he calls you."

Dumbledore stared at him.

"Why should I put myself in danger if you won't even listen to what I have to say?" Severus curled his hands into fists. "If Lily dies because of your fucking  _hatred_ of the Dark Arts, I will kill you myself."

"Severus," Dumbledore said quietly.

"Good evening, Headmaster," Severus snapped. "I have endless piles of essays to mark. Even that dreck is a better use of my time than speaking with you." He whirled around and stalked out of the office, blood heating up his veins. Dumbledore didn't call out for him, didn't try to follow him, didn't even send his bloody fucking Patronus. Good.

Severus stomped through the empty hallways to his office in the dungeons. Everything was as he had left it: the essays stacked neatly on his desk, a Polyjuice Potion bubbling away in the corner, an enterprise he'd undertaken for his own edification. He had no intention of marking the essays. Let the little bastards wait. The essays were all terrible anyway; the last batch he'd actually cast up into the air and graded via random magic. The students hadn't noticed the difference.

Instead, he went into his bedroom, locking the door behind him. He reached under his mattress for the photograph Dumbledore had given him a year ago, the day that Harriet had been born. Lily was in the picture, too, cradling Harriet to her chest. Harriet was clean and pink-skinned, her eyes closed, her dark hair matted against her tiny scalp. Lily was flushed and happy-looking, her hair tangled and damp with sweat, her eyes tired. But whenever Severus looked at the photograph, she would lift her head toward him and smile.

"I'm sorry, Lily," he whispered. Her smile faltered, and she tilted her head at him, as if to ask what was wrong. "I'll keep you safe," he said. "Whether Dumbledore wants me to or not."

He tucked the photograph back under his mattress - it was too dangerous to keep it out, not with all those Slytherins parading through here every time someone cast a goddamn hex. All it took was the wrong Slytherin to see that picture, to wonder why greasy old Professor Snape had a snapshot of a beautiful woman with a baby, to mention it to his Death Eater parents -

No. Severus shouldn't have the photograph at all, he knew, but he couldn't bear to throw it away, so he kept it both physically hidden and warded, and only looked at it late at night.

There were other things Severus kept physically hidden and warded, books and scrolls stacked into a trunk which he had shoved into alcove he'd discovered in the wall. Dark magic, the lot of them. He wasn't about to leave his most prized possessions at Spinner's End, but he couldn't have students or faculty - who also had a tendency to traipse through his rooms at the slightest provocation - noticing the Dark Arts tomes lining his bookshelf.

He pulled out his favorite of the books, an old honest-to-God textbook that had belonged to his mother; he'd no idea where she'd gotten it, as she'd gone to Hogwarts as well. It was always useful as a starting point, however, as it gave a general overview of all the subcategories of the Dark Arts, all the eddies and digressions in its compendium of spells.

Severus wasn't completely sure what he was looking for, not yet. He turned to the section on Protection spells, but it was all too basic, the sort of things he used to cast to keep Lily safe. As much as Severus didn't want to admit it, Dumbledore was probably right about Dark magic - certain types of it, anyway - attracting the Dark Lord's attention. These protection spells, cast to hide an Order member? The Dark Lord would know immediately.

Severus also had the matter of Dumbledore to contend with - it would have to be a spell that would slip past him undetected, something that he wouldn't be able to trace back to Severus. Not that Dumbledore would  _do_ anything, probably, especially if it wound up saving the Longbottom boy, but Severus didn't particularly feel like listening to him nag.

He tossed the textbook aside and pulled out a few of the more advanced books in the stack, focusing on those that he knew had chapters on protection spells and Dark Arts defense. He pored over them, fingers tracing over the faded print, the dusty, crumbling paper. His thoughts churned. Something nagged at the back of his mind, a seed of an idea -

He picked up the scrolls, read through them. Most of these were scholarly papers, written in the last thirty years or so. Things that hadn't made it into books yet.

One of them was about love.

Love, as Severus had told Lily after that day in the woods, that day his entire life opened up for him, was a matter of contention amongst Dark wizards. Many didn't believe that something as simple and sentimental as  _love_ could undo all their magic. But Severus had seen it happen, hadn't he? He had knelt in the snow and poured out his love for Lily until the side effects of casting the Avada Kedavra disappeared.

Love. The word stirred in his thoughts, abstract and almost-meaningless.  _Love_.

Severus tossed the scroll to the floor and lay back on his bed. He stared up the cold grey ceiling, at the greenish shadows moving like algae across the stones. He thought about what he knew of the Dark Arts.

They were more powerful than the magic the Order used. The Concealment charm was, Severus admitted, extremely powerful, but only because it had Dark elements to it - foisting your secret on another person, asking them to bear the weight of your concealment. It was a kind of a sacrifice, although one the sacrifice took willingly. Out of love.

Sacrifice gives power to magic; that was why the Dark Arts were so strong. But love counteracted that power. That's why the Concealment charm worked as well as it did. But the Concealment charm had a weakness, which was trust - if the Longbottoms put their trust in the wrong person, they would be vulnerable to the Dark Lord's spells. And that was the scenario Severus wanted to prepare for.

Because if the Longbottom boy died, the Dark Lord would win. And if the Dark Lord won, Lily and Harriet would die. Severus wouldn't, at least not by the Dark Lord's hand: he would be deemed a hero to the cause, a spy who helped bring down the great Albus Dumbledore.

But he knew that he would die in other, quieter ways.

_Love,_ thought Severus.  _Sacrifice_.

_Love._

_Sacrifice._

_Love._

_Sacrifice._

He thought those two words over and over until he fell asleep on top of his bedcovers, surrounding by Dark Arts books and a photograph of Lily and their child, and as he dreamed, he planned.


	49. Snape

Two weeks later, Severus was at the Quidditch match against Hufflepuff when his Dark Mark began to burn.

He stiffened in his seat, no longer able to concentrate on the blur off brooms and students streaking over the pitch. He tightened his sleeve over his arm, hoping the fabric of his robe would act as a bandage and soothe the burning. He should have known better.

The burning subsided, and Severus let out a stifled sigh of relief. McGonagall glanced at him sharply. He ignored her.

The burning started again.

Severus bit down on his tongue to keep from crying out. Ever since Severus had come to Hogwarts, the Dark Lord had kept his summons spare; he did not expect Severus to show up moments after the Mark burned, and whenever it ignited the pain fell away after a few seconds had passed.

It never burned twice.

The pain faded, leaving an itching in its wake. Severus rubbed at his arm.

The burning flared up and this time Severus did cry out, since he'd been touching the mark, and even though this robes he saw a flash of the Dark Lord's face, white with fury. He stumbled out of his chair. All the teachers looked at him like he'd gone mad.

"Professor Snape?" McGonagall said archly, the way she had when he was a student. "Is everything all right?" A smile toyed at the ends of her mouth. "I take it you can't stand they thought of losing to Hufflepuff?"

Good God, was Slytherin losing? He glanced at the scoreboard, and there it was: ten points for Hufflepuff while the Dark Lord had been searing into his flesh. Under any other circumstance, Severus might have cared. Not now.

"I don't fell well," he muttered. He tottered in place and knocked up against his chair. McGonagall actually seemed vaguely concerned, but he refused to look her in the eye. Pain crackled up his arm. He could feel it in his fingers, in his shoulder. Like he was burning up.

"There's been a bit of a bug going around," Dumbledore said suddenly, voice breaking through the teacher's box. Everyone turned to stare at him. "Mozeria. Rather nasty. Rest helps."

"Yes," Severus muttered. "Mozeria."

"Why don't you go lie down in your room for a bit," Dumbledore went on, circling one arm around Severus's shoulder. Severus leaned up against him in spite of himself; the pain was making him dizzy. "I'll say here and cheer for Slytherin for you."

"Thank you," Severus mumbled. He wanted to pull out his wand and slice off his arm. The burning had never been so bad before. Before, he always came when called.

Severus stumbled off the Quidditch pitch, stalking quickly over the grounds, gritting his teeth against the misery pulsing in his arm. He couldn't simply Apparate out of Hogwarts, of course, and so he had to make it to his room, where the fireplace could pull him to the Ministry, the place where the Dark Lord conducted all his business.

Severus knew there was a not unlikely chance that the Dark Lord had learned he was a spy. There was a not unlikely chance that his persistent, terrible burning was a herald to his torture and death. His Occlumency walled away the panic and terror and despair, but it left the list of spells, Light and Dark both, to use against the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters if necessary.

Severus couldn't not go. Not with the way the Mark was eating away at his arm. Not if he wanted any hope of convincing the Dark Lord of his alledged loyalty.

And so when he made it to his room, he tossed the flinty green floo powder onto the flames, and he left the safety of Hogwarts for the chilly echoing darkness of the Ministy of Magic.

The Dark Lord was waiting for him.

"Severus," he said, and his voice was like the winds of winter. "You have disappointed me."

Panic twisted up inside Severus, red-hot and painful. The Occlumency beat it down. He bowed his head. "Please, my Lord," he murmurred, "tell me what -"  _You're a traitor, a traitor, a traitor._

"The Longbottoms have diappeared," the Dark Lord said. "They have disappeared  _right out from under me_."

The Occlumency held. Severus's mind was as empty as the summer sky, and he knew exactly what to say.

"A spy."

THe Dark Lord's eyes flashed.

"Yes," he said, low and hissing. "Yes, that was my thought as well."

And then he was rooting inside Severus's head, rifling through darkness. The coldness coiled around the base of Severus's spine. The Dark Lord found nothing.

He pulled away. Severus kept his head up, his eyes open, in case he wanted to look again. He could not look suspicious.

"Do you know who it is?" the Dark Lord said.

"No, my lord. I didn't know there was one until - until now."

The Dark Lord narrowed his eyes, cold and suspicious. "Doesn't Dumbledore share information with you? That is your job, after all, the reason for your placement at Hogwarts."

"Of course, my lord." Severus shifted his weight. "But I'm afraid Dumbledore doesn't yet trust me entirely."

"Then you're failing me."

Severus's sheilds shuddered. "I know, my lord. I will do better in the future."

"Did he ever even mention the Longbottoms to you?" The Dark Lord was in his head again, searching for the answer.

"No," Severus said, teeth aching against the Dark Lord's coldness.

"You're worthless."

Why did it still hurt to hear the Dark Lord say that? Why did it cut through his soul, his Occlumency, like a sword? But in the end it was for the best, since with that jolt of shame the Dark Lord smiled and pulled away.

"Forgive me, my lord," Severus said.

"I'll forgive you when you get me the Longbottoms," the Dark Lord said. His eyes glittered, his teeth gleamed. "And the spy. Surely you can find a  _spy,_ Severus."

"I will, my lord," Severus murmurred.

The Dark Lord pulled out his wand. Severus didn't move.

_"Crucio,_ " the Dark Lord said.

It was like every artery and every vein in Severus's body had become disconnected. It was like every bone was crumbling into dust, every organ was burning into ash and ember. Severus screamed and crashed to the floor. The room turned red turned white turned red. He felt his soul being ripped from his body.

His Occlumency held.

When it ended the pain drained away and left behind it an ache in his bones and a shaking in his mind. The shields were cracked and broken and now that it was over thoughts slipped through: all Lily, her smile, her voice, flashes of her hair and naked body. Severus tried to push himself up, but his limbs were soft and weak, and he only collasped back against the floor.

"A taste of what will happen," the Dark Lord said, "if you fail."

* * *

Severus pounded on the door to Dumbledore's office. His body still ached from the Cruciatus Curse, his joints dull and sore as if he had a fever. But his thoughts were bright and clear.

"Open up the door!" he shouted. No response. He pulled out his wand, tapped it against the door, muttered, " _Alohomora_." A flare of enchantment; the door didn't open. He hadn't really expected it would.

"Dumbledore!" he shouted, and he blasted the door with his wand. It shuddered on its hinges.

This time, it swung open.

"Severus," Dumbledore said pleasantly. He wore a sleeping robe, a night cap. "You could have sent your Patronus."

"No, I couldn't." Severus shoved his way into the room. Dumbledore frowned.

"You're limping," he said.

Severus collapsed down in the big leather chair beside Dumbledore's desk. "That tends to be happen when you've been Crucio'd."

Dumbledore's face turned dark and concerned. "Oh, Severus," he said.

"Yes," Severus snarled. "That's my name."

Dumbledore Accio'd a teapot and a pair of cups into the room and set them on the desk in front of Severus. The teapot was warm to the touch. Severus poured himself a cup and gulped it down like it was whiskey. He hardly tasted it; all that mattered was the tea's warmth.

"Tell me what happened," Dumbledore said, pulling up a chair beside him.

He didn't ask if the Dark Lord knew Severus was a spy.  _Well, of course,_ Severus thought.  _I would be dead, if that were the case_. Although some part of him wanted to believe it was because Dumbledore cared more about Severus the man than Severus the double agent.

_The Cruciatus Curse addled your brain, it seems_.

Severus poured another cup of tea. This one he sipped, the fragrant steam swirling up over his nose. Dumbledore regarded him with those blue eyes, and Severus told him everything.

"He doesn't think it's you," Dumbledore said, whenever Severus had finished. Severus set his cup down - there, proof that Dumbledore cared more about Severus the double agent. It was reassuring to have his worldview remain unchanged.

"He might still suspect," Severus said. "He found nothing using Legilimency, of course, but if I continue to fuck things up -" He gave Dumbledore a dark look. "I've been doing research," he said, "into possible Dark protection spells for the Longbottoms -"

"We aren't discussing this again."

Severus dug his nails into his palms. "If I can hand him the Longbottoms," he said, "but the boy had a protection spell on him, strong enough to match the Dark Lord - I think I may have found a possibility -"

"Severus," Dumbledore said sharply, the same tone he used on misbehaving students. "It's not an option."

"If I don't give him the Longbottoms," Severus said, "then you lose your little spy." He sneered. "Think Sirius Black would be keen on infiltrating the Death Eaters? He certainly has the aptitude for it. Not many wizards attempt murder at the age of sixteen."

Dumbledore tilted his head. "You can't hand Voldemort the Longbottoms," he said. "Only their Secret-Keeper can."

Severus glowered. "Then you better start prepping Black. Shall I give him the news or shall you?"

"You can, however, hand Voldemort the Secret-Keeper."

Severus froze. Dumbledore was staring at him as placidly as a cow, all his emotions tucked away behind that doddering old facade.

"I don't know their Secret-Keeper," Severus said.

"It's an Auror named Jason Hanley."

Thoughts flooded Severus's head.  _What the hell's the old man doing? What does he want_ me  _to do?_ "You're lying."

"I most certainly am not, Severus. I'm merely considering my options. You are quite correct about Voldemort needing proof of your loyalty. This is the best way."

"The best way?" Severus asked. "And what if Hanley gives them up?"

"He's their Secret-Keeper." Dumbledore's expression did not change. "Their secret will die with him."

For a moment, Severus did not understand what Dumbledore was saying. Then he did.

He did not know how to respond.

"Jason Hanley understood the gravity of the situation when he agreed to keep the Longbottoms' secret," Dumbledore said. "He understood what could happen."

"Really?" Severus snapped. "He understood that you would send him off to die so that Longbottoms couldn't be discovered?" Severus had to admit this entire plan had a vaguely Slytherin air about it. Not the work of a  _clever_  Slytherin, of course - a clever Slytherin would never assume the best in someone, the way Dumbledore was doing.

"And if Hanley opts not to die for the Longbottoms?" Severus asked. "What then?"

There was a long pause, Dumbledore's pale eyes floating in the darkness. "I've put my faith in him, as well," he said.

_For fuck's sake_. But Severus didn't say anything out loud. Dumbledore was a terrible Slytherin, but he, Severus, was not. He could take Hanley to the Dark Lord, as requested, but he would only do so if he had a back-up plan, Dark magic to protect the Longbottom boy. His research had given him the inkling of an idea - love and sacrifice wound up tight as spun yarn. He only needed to determine the best way to implement the spell. To set it into motion.

It was Dark, but it wasn't a spell that he could cast. However, a mother could: maternal love, maternal sacrifice.

"Fine," Severus said. "I'll take Hanley to You-Know-Who."

"You don't want to," Dumbledore said.

"Of course I don't want to," Severus snapped. "It's an idiotic plan. There are too many variables."

"You don't want to kill an innocent." Dumbledore's face flickered. "Neither do I. But Hanley knew the risks when he agreed, and sometimes these things must be done."

Severus scowled. Dumbledore's words struck him in his heart, an arrow of truth that reminded him of Lily, of his love for her and her love for him. But Severus would never let Dumbledore see that. It was too close to a weakness.

"I'm not going to kill him," he said, voice flat. "The Dark Lord is."

And then he turned on his heel and stalked out of the office, black cloak rippling out behind him.


	50. Snape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warning: Snape is a slut-shaming jerk to one of his students.

Down in his rooms, Severus wanted to sleep. But not yet, not yet.

He used blood to send the message to the Dark Lord, a few drops eked from his palm. A tiny, insignificant sacrifice, but one that would protect his message as it fluttered out of Hogwarts and toward the Ministry of Magic, a pale streak in the sky like a shooting star.

_To get to the Longbottoms,_ he wrote on a scrap of parchment,  _you have to go through a wizard named Jason Hanley. He knows their location. He is the only one._  Severus thought for a moment, then scribbled out a few lines about how the Concealment Charm worked - just enough for the Dark Lord to know he couldn't torture the location out of Hanley, but not enough that his Death Eaters could develop a counter-spell. Severus doubted that  _he_ could develop a counter-spell, and he was a much stronger wizard than the ones the Dark Lord had working for him now.

Severus rolled up the parchment and sealed it with wax. He dropped his blood on the paper. Then he lifted the message up with his wand, chanted a few words in a Dark language, and the message disappeared. He hoped it would be enough.

His body shuddered with the sense memory of the Cruciatus Curse.

For the next few days, Severus waited. The students grated on his nerves, as usual. One of the seventh-year Slytherin girls came to his office and tried to wheedle him into raising the grade on her essay in exchange for certain sexual favors; Severus stared at her pale, lovely face, the hint of a smile curving at the corners of her lips. For a moment he thought about the way Lily would look before she did those things, her eyes bright and mischievous with arousal. He immediately shut the memory out.

"I'm not sure why you believe infecting me with a score of Muggle and magical diseases would incline me toward raising your grade," Severus said.

The girl's mouth dropped a little. Her eyes went wide.

"Was this, as the Muggles say, a cry for help?" Severus sneered. "Shall I send you up to Madame Pomfrey? I don't want to find out that half our Quidditch team is sick when it comes time to play against Gryffindor."

"Professor Snape," the girl said. "I don't - I just thought -" Her eyes shimmered a little with tears.

"Don't ever ask me to do that again," Severus told her, and he slammed the door open with his wand and glared at her until she gathered up her books, her movements clumsy, all that adolescent grace dissolved away. Severus felt rather pleased with himself, at least until his thoughts began to wander, and some voice inside his head asked,  _What would Lily say_?

The rest of the week finished out. The fifth-years turned in essays that Severus stacked on his desk and forgot about. Severus was able to assign detention to four obnoxious Gryffindors who reminded him more than a little of Black and his lackeys; it was immensely satisfying to watch them chop up spider corpses and clean out cauldrons by hand as he sat behind his desk reading that month's  _Potion's Monthly_.

Wednesday afternoon - Halloween, although Severus didn't much care - Severus was sitting in his office, glowering at the pile of ungraded essays. The students had been asking after them; Severus gave some Hufflepuff detention after she gave a rather unHufflepuffian sigh of vexation upon hearing the essays weren't ready. He dug through the stack until he found hers, skimmed it, then scrawled,  _Pitiful research. Perhaps you should try the library, not the notes of first-years._  It made him feel a little better.

This was his life now. Essays and lesson plans and students, always the fucking students, swarming around him like sloppily uniformed bees. It was not like Hogwarts before; in many ways it worse, not only because there was no Lily but because of the constant responsibility. Severus had worked hard as a student, particularly in Potions and Arithmancy, subjects he enjoyed, but the work had never been as constant as it was now. He was always working, always a teacher. But at least as a teacher he had control over the students; he could bully them into submission before they tried anything on him. He had been here for over a year and not once had he been pranked. Not once. They were all too scared to try.

That, Severus had to admit, was a pleasant change of events.

He selected another essay at random and read the first paragraph and the last.  _Pathetic reasoning_ , he wrote across the bottom. The next essay in the stack belonged to a Slytherin; he scrawled _Acceptable_  across the top without bothering to read it. Dumbledore wanted him showing favor to the Slytherin students. He didn't care one way or another, but anything that meant less work for him was always welcome.

His arm began to burn.

"Fuck!" Ink blotted across the essay he'd been reading, the work of an admittedly talented Ravenclaw. Smoke curled up through the fabric of his robe. He shoved the essay and the quill away, knocking the rest of the essays off the desk. They fluttered out over the floor like birds. "Fuck," Severus said again, as he pushed up his sleeve to look at the Dark Mark.

The pain faded.

It didn't return they way it had before. Severus leaned back in his chair, taking deep, calming breaths. He didn't think about what the Dark Lord could want; such thoughts only manufactured anxiety that would creep along the walls of his Occlumency.

He blanked out his mind. Then pushed away from his desk, tossed a handful of Floo powder into the fireplace, and stepped through to the Ministry of Magic.


	51. Snape

Severus waited for the Dark Lord in the room that had once belonged to the Minister. The windows were hung with opulent curtains, the desk was a deep, rich mahogany. There were dark spots on the walls where the paintings of former Ministers had been removed.

The door swung open. Severus stood up without thinking, and when he saw the Dark Lord, he bowed low, his hair hanging in his face.

"So glad you did not have a delay," the Dark Lord said, putting one hand on Severus's shoulder. His voice didn't sound dangerous or cold; it sounded delighted. Severus lifted his head.

"Anything for you, my lord," he said.

The Dark Lord smiled. "Happy Halloween, Severus."

Severus blinked. Was that what this was all about? Holiday wishes? Severus remembered Christmas Eve, nearly two years ago, Lily in his arms, the Dark Lord so lonely he called Severus away from the only happiness Severus had ever known.

"You too, my lord."

"It isn't customary to exchange gifts on Halloween, but you gave me one anyway." The Dark Lord's smile deepened. His teeth flashed in the firelight. "I'd like to be honest with you. I had my doubts. The information you brought us from Dumbledore was always useless, useless - but I should have known better."

_Hanley_ , Severus thought. "It took considerable effort to convince Dumbledore of my - loyalties," he said. "But it seems I've finally managed to sway him."

"You certainly have." The Dark Lord flicked his wand. Magic sparked out of its tip and disappeared out into the hallway. "The Concealment Charm has always been the strongest of the Opposition's magics. There are some among my ranks, even among my  _Inner Circle_ , who whisper that it can't be broken."

_It can't, thank Christ_. The thought existed for only a half a second before the shields slammed into place and erased it. "It's a strong spell, certainly," Severus said. "But if any wizard could break it, you would be the one."

The Dark Lord laughed. "The Concealment Charm is emblematic of the Opposition's greatest weakness." He looked at Severus expectantly.

"And what weakness is that?"

Another slow, dangerous smile. "Trust."

The office doors opened again. A pair of masked Death Eaters stepped inside, leading behind them a wizard with shaggy red hair and pale grey eyes. He did not have the drawn-out look of someone who'd been Crucio'd, Severus noted. His skin was bright with color, his movements smooth and unbroken.

He did look frightened, but in the presence of the Dark Lord, that meant nothing.

"Severus," the Dark Lord said, "I would like you to meet Jason Hanley."

Severus stepped forward. Hanley gazed at him for a few seconds before his eyes widened with recognition - with surprise.

"You didn't know?" the Dark Lord said to him. "That the new Potions Master worked for me? Show him, Severus."

Severus pushed his robe up his arm. The Mark coiled in its usual place, black and grey against the white of his skin.

"How did you -" Hanley spat out. "Dumbledore  _trusted_ you. Even after we all begged him to explain himself - He fucking  _defended_ you, you sneaking bast - "

"Enough," the Dark Lord said sharply. It reminded Severus, stupidly, of McGonagall barking at students in the Great Hall.

Hanley fell silent, his face angry and defiant.

"I've almost won," the Dark Lord said. "I hold the Ministry, as you can see, and I hold Hogwarts."

"One fucking spy -" Hanley said.

"One fucking spy is all I need," the Dark Lord replied. "One fucking spy brought you to me."

Hanley turned toward Severus and Severus stared back, calm and empty as his mind.

"What do you want?" Hanley asked.

"I want wizarding England," the Dark Lord said. "And for all intents and purposes, I have it. I know you and your little  _army_  still think there's a fight left, but if I can infiltrate Hogwarts - " and here he gestured toward Severus "-what makes you think you have any chance of winning? Any chance at all?"

Hanley's expression flickered for a moment, and Severus saw immediately what the Dark Lord was doing. You couldn't torture a secret out of a Secret-Keeper. But you could ask for one.

Something like dread wormed its way through the shields, and Severus thought about about the Dark protection spell Dumbledore would never allow to be cast.

_Good thing I never asked for permission_.

"When I win," the Dark Lord was saying to Hanley. "And I will, make no mistake about that - I will not look too kindly upon the Opposition. It's true you weren't much of a threat to me, but one still sprays for insects, doesn't one?"

Hanley said nothing, but his expression didn't look quite so defiant anymore.

"I know the Opposition fancies the Avada Kedavra to be the worst of the killing curses, to be, in fact, the  _only_ killing curse, but I'm afraid that's not the case. Why, Severus alone has developed several killing curses, all of them works of art, exquisite in the pain they cause." The Dark Lord ran his fingers along the side of Hanley's face, and Severus could see him shivering beneath the Dark Lord's touch. "When I execute the members of the Order of the Phoenix, I will not be using the Avada Kedavra."

For the first time, Hanley spoke.

"We knew about the killing curses," he said. "And we knew that death was always a possibility."

Spoken like a true Gryffindor, but unlike a true Gryffindor, there was no belief behind the words. They were empty as glass.

"Is that so?" the Dark Lord said.

Hanley didn't answer.

"There's no reason for you to die, Jason. And perhaps more importantly, there's no reason for you to  _live_ as you've been living, in that rundown little cottage my Death Eaters pulled you from. Is that a home for that lovely wife of yours - she's quite safe," the Dark Lord added, when Hanley's face turned red. "You'll recall my Death Eaters didn't touch her, didn't touch the baby sleeping in his crib."

From the expression on Hanley's face, Severus knew this was true.

"I can give you a house," the Dark Lord said, "when my time has come. I can give you a stipend to ensure you and your family are well cared for during the transition. I can find you work in one of the alley shops - something stable and safe. I'm not requiring you to become a Death Eater. You don't have serve me in the coming years, at least not in the sense that Severus does."

"You're lying," Hanley said.

"No," the Dark Lord said. "I'm negotiating." And he conjured up a scroll and a set of black feather quills. "Are you aware of how Dark magic works, Jason?"

Hanley hesitated before answering. "Sacrifice," he said.

"Ah, I see you're capable of sifting through Dumbledore's propaganda! Excellent work, young man. Yes, the Dark Arts are merely sacrificial magic. No more, no less." The Dark Lord spread out the scroll against the mahogany desk. "A contract signed in blood is blessed with Dark magic. It can not be broken."

Hanley stared at the scroll. Severus couldn't read his face; he didn't bother to try and read his mind.

"I know what you want." Hanley looked up at the Dark Lord. "And if I don't tell you, then you won't win. I heard the prophecy."

"Did you?" the Dark Lord asked. "Did you hear it word for word?"

Hanley blinked.  _No_ , Severus thought. He doubted any of the Order members had.

"I have," the Dark Lord said. "And it says only that the boy is capable of defeating me. That if I live he must die, and vice versa." The Dark Lord shook his head. "It's a shame prophecies can't be more direct, isn't it?"

"Sounds pretty direct to me," Hanley said.

"The Longbottoms can't stay in hiding indefinitely," the Dark Lord said. "And an infant can not defeat me. Nor can a little boy. If you don't tell me how to find them now, I will still win, but you won't get your house, your stipend, your steady job. And I'm afraid your wife will most certainly become a widow. If not by my hands, then -" the Dark Lord let his voice trail off. "Of course, she won't stay a widow for long. We don't spare the wives of the Opposition." He shrugged. "It is, of course, your choice. I can't force you to tell me. I simply can offer you a better life than Dumbledore can, than Dumbledore  _wants_ to."

There was a long silence. The air in the room felt heavy. Severus felt nothing. He didn't know what emotions were roiling beneath the shields. He'd built the walls too tight and too thick to tell.

"Let me see the contract."

"Of course." The Dark Lord drifted the contract up on the air with his wand. It came to rest in Hanley's hands. Hanley read over it. He glanced at the Dark Lord, reached into his cloak, pulled out his wand. The Dark Lord didn't even blink.

Severus had to admit that was clever, letting Hanley keep his wand.

Hanley touched his wand to the contract. The parchment glowed golden for a few seconds and then faded. Hanley glanced up the Dark Lord in surprise.

"This is Binding," he said. "By death."

"That surprises you?"

"You have much more to lose if I don't sign it."

The Dark Lord smiled wide enough to show his teeth. "I have everything to gain if you do."

"You won't ever be able to kill me," Hanley said. "Or my family."

"I'm aware of the terms."

"And all I have to do is tell you their location?"

Severus noticed how Hanley didn't say the Longbottoms' name.

"You have to give up their secret, yes. But that's all I ask of you."

Hanley stared at the Dark Lord for a moment or two longer. Then he turned back to the contract. Tapped it with his wand again. It lit up like Christmas.

The shields trembled. Severus knitted them tighter, willed them to stay in place. He was numb.  _Lily_ , he thought.  _Harriet_.

_Please don't sign_.

And then the Occlumency swallowed even that.

"Give me a quill," Hanley said.

Severus remained motionless even though his insides felt as if they were being ripped into a thousand pieces. The quill sailed through the air, coming to rest beside Hanley's head. He took it distractedly, still looking down at the contract.

_Dumbledore, you fucking fool. The Dark Lord's right, your biggest weakness is trust_. Then the shields locked down on those treacherous thoughts, and Severus trembled.

Hanley ran the quill along the inside of his arm. Blood beaded at the tip.

Severus reached back deep into his thoughts, past the shields, past Lily, past his memory of the photograph of Harriet. Buried amidst all that happiness was his plan, his Dark spell, tucked away from not only the Dark Lord but Dumbledore as well.

Hanley scrawled his name across the bottom of the contract, straightened, handed it to the Dark Lord, who signed as well, with his own dark blood.

"You made the right decision," the Dark Lord told Hanley. Then: "Where are they?"

"23 Leonas Circle," Hanley said, his voice flat. "In Godric's Hollow."

The air in the room was electrified.

"Can I go home to my wife now?" Hanley asked.

"Of course," the Dark Lord said. "But if the information you gave me was wrong -"

"It's not." Still completely emotionless. Hanley stared at the Dark Lord for a few seconds, then turned to Severus. Severus wanted to lunge across the room and strangle him for giving the information to the Dark Lord, for putting Lily in danger, Lily and Harriet, his only chance at happiness -

Hanley walked out of the room.

"That went much more smoothly than I expected," the Dark Lord said. He rolled up the contract and tucked it inside his robes. "In an hour Jason Hanley will receive a owl carrying a rather large sum of money, and the Longbottoms will all be dead." The Dark Lord paused, looked closely at Severus's face. "Severus," he said softly. "Don't you share my happiness?"

_Here it comes_ , Severus thought, and he filled his head with false memories.

The Dark Lord seemed colder than usual, cold and sharp. The false memories were of Lily, only doctored so that Lily resembled Alice Longbottom. Her red hair was brown, her face was softer, rounder, darker complected. In the false memory they were walking through the Forbidden Forest, to their secret place. They were studying together beneath the oak tree in the courtyard. They were kissing as children, lips brushing together beside the river that ran through Spinner's End.

Severus ripped his gaze away from the Dark Lord's, an attempt at verisimilitude. Hopefully it didn't get him killed. "Forgive me, my lord," he murmured. "I - I've loved her for a long time."

"Severus," the Dark Lord said, "Why didn't you tell me?"

Severus shook his head, hair hanging lank and greasy in his eyes. "I was ashamed, my lord."

The Dark Lord pressed his finger underneath Severus's chin and lifted his head. Their gazes met, but the Dark Lord did not seep into Severus's thoughts. "I wish you had told me," he said. "I would've liked to have had this explanation for your peculiar behavior much earlier."

Severus didn't say anything.

"You brought me Hanley," the Dark Lord said, "despite knowing that it would harm her. From what I understand of love -"

"My loyalties are to you, my lord," Severus said. "Always. But it was - it was painful, to know that I would be the one -"

The Dark Lord held up one hand. "The prophecy is not about her," he said. "It's about her child."

"I could care less about the brat." Severus sneered, thinking of James Potter, transformed in his mind to look like Frank Longbottom.

The Dark Lord smiled, stroked Severus's cheek with the back of his hand. "I will spare her," he said.

Severus let out a deep sigh of relief. Hopefully Alice Longbottom would fulfill her own role in all of this.  _Putting your trust in her_ , he thought with a twist of disdain.  _Just like Dumbledore._

He tucked all his thoughts away.

"Thank you, my lord," he said, his gratitude as real as the pain coiling around inside his chest, pain that had nothing to do with Alice Longbottom.

The Dark Lord dropped his hand. "Go back to Hogwarts," he said. "Make yourself seen by the staff. You must have an alibi for the time of the death, in case anything goes wrong."

"Nothing will go wrong," Severus said. His shields quaked.

The Dark Lord smiled as if he agreed. "Still," he said. "We must play things safe until the boy is dead."

Severus nodded. His shields were barely containing his emotion, the panic and fear, the memories of an undisguised Lily. But the Dark Lord didn't bother to look inside his head. Lucky.

"I'll send word," the Dark Lord said, "when we are successful. I'm entrusting you to secure Hogwarts in those twilight hours." His eyes glowed red and green. "Do you understand?"

"Yes, my lord." Severus bowed, and when he lifted his head the Dark Lord was already striding out of the room, his robes streaming out behind him like swirls of ink.

Severus's arm ached. He rubbed at the Mark, massaging it. His touch felt alien, as if it were someone else touching him.

He flung Floo powder into the fireplace and disappeared back to Hogwarts.


	52. Snape

They were in the middle of the Halloween feast. He could hear the voices of children drifting out of the castle, up to the tower where he stood in his cloak and scarf, smoking one of Lily's cigarettes. It was stale with age. Severus didn't care.

Severus had left his rooms shortly after returning. His shields were still up, not to keep anyone from looking in but to keep himself from feeling all that suppressed terror. He had sent a message to Dumbledore, a scrap of parchment that would appear at his place at the head of the table. Out of obligation more than anything; it would do no good. The Opposition would never rally in time.

So Severus smoked his stale cigarette. He looked up at the bright stars. The photograph of Harriet and Lily was tucked away in his pocket in case he didn't have a chance to clear out his rooms. In case his magic didn't work.

A spell he couldn't cast. He could only arrange it, moving all the pieces into place, expecting - like bloody fucking Dumbledore - that those pieces would do the most righteous thing. That one of them, the Longbottom woman, would love more fully than anyone else in this miserable world.

That she would sacrifice herself to protect her son.

He wasn't hopeful.

He dragged on the cigarette, blew smoke out toward the stars. The nicotine made him jittery. This was going to fail.

_The Secret-Keeper_ , he thought.  _I'll need to find her Secret-Keeper. And then I'll need to find her_.

Like Jason Hanley, he couldn't think her name. He'd betrayed her, betrayed her as surely as Hanley had betrayed the Longbottoms. But perhaps in the aftermath he'd be able to send her away. To Russia with his mother. To the vast Canadian wilderness.

Someplace she could be safe.

"I'll keep you safe," he whispered, ash dropping down the front of his robes. The chilled Halloween wind swept through his hair, bringing with it the scent of magic and pumpkin, cinnamon and mischief. "I'll keep you both safe."

But he knew he was lying.


	53. Lily

Lily woke up.

The safe house was silent; Harriet was sleeping in the crib beside Lily's bed, her body nothing more than a soft little lump in the silvery moonlight spilling in through the windows.

_A nightmare,_ Lily thought. She didn't remember it, didn't remember any dream at all, except for a vague sense of unease. She lay beneath her quilts, listening to the cold October wind rattling against the walls, and knew she wasn't going to fall back asleep.

Lily slid out of bed and pulled on her robe and slippers, cast a warmth spell to get the chill out of the house. A tiny star followed behind her when she left the room, its twin resting beside Harriet's head. It had been a gift from Adelia, a charm that watched over Harriet and let Lily know if she needed tending to.

The safe house was eerie in the moonlight. Transformed. Lily felt as if she were seeing it for the first time.

In the kitchen, she made hot cocoa. She sat at the kitchen table and stared at the  _Prophet_  that their current resident had been reading at dinner last night. Some article about a new shop opening up in Diagon Alley. All the articles had been like that in recent months. Silly, frivolous. Albus had told her that You-Know-Who had taken control of the  _Prophet_ back in July.

Some days, Lily tried not to think about England at all.

She was halfway finished with her cocoa when she first heard it - a chiming, coming from far away, in the direction of the sea. Her skin prickled.  _Tower bells_ , she thought, although that was impossible. Angua Beach did not have a tower with bells, and there were no Muggle villages anywhere near here.

Lily stepped out onto the safe house's front porch and stood very still and listened. Definitely bells, tons of them. All clanging together so discordantly that their sound became music. Some belated Halloween celebration? But they were coming from the direction of the ocean, which made no sense.

Lily pulled her robe tightly around her chest and headed toward the beach. Sand spilled into her slippers. Harriet's star glimmered beside her head. And the sound of the bells came drifting over the sea with the wind.

The air smelled sweet, like clover and honey. Like magic.

_Something's happened_ , she thought.

She cast her Patronus, the white doe rushing into the seawind and growing smaller and smaller until it bled into all the stars. The bells continued clanging. They weren't coming from the sea, she knew. They were coming from England.

Lily did not know what to think. She didn't know if this was a good sign or a bad sign. If she should go into the house and wake Adelia. If she should gather up Harriet in her arms and flee across the Atlantic Ocean to America.

Because she didn't know what to do, she just sat down in the sand and watched the waves roll in. And she hadn't been sitting there long when the owls appeared.

She didn't know what they were at first, because she had never seen so many at once. A whole flock of them, dark against the starry sky, brown and grey and white owls all turned silver by the moonlight. When they flew overhead, she could feel the soft feathery wind created by their wings.

"Hey!" she shouted. "Down here!"

Only a few of them altered course; the others were all too well trained. They landed in the sand around her, envelopes clutched in their beaks. She opened the envelope closest to her; she didn't recognize the seal.

_Adelia, the war's over_.

Lily stared at the looping handwriting. She flipped the parchment over; nothing.  _The war's over_. But which side won?

Lily wrenched an envelope from another owl. This one was from Remus; he'd signed his name across the back of the envelope. She ripped it open, her hands shaking.

_Lily, I can't write much because I'm still technically undercover, but - the war's over. You-Know-Who is dead. You can come home_.

The parchment slipped out of Lily's hands and fluttered to the sand. One of the owls squawked and flapped its wings, thrust its envelope at her. She ignored it. The bells were louder now. The bells of England, so full of joy that she could hear them across the water.

_You can go home. You can see Sev_.

"Take the letters to the house," she said to the remaining owls, and then she pushed herself up and ran through the dunes, kicking up great arcs of sand, her robes streaming out behind her, the Harriet's star a streak behind her.

The lights were on in the safe house. When she bounded up the porch, she could hear laughter inside, laughter and crying.

She pushed through the front door. Adelia was standing with their only resident, an Auror who'd been injured in September. They were clutching each other, letters scattered around their feet and clutched in their hands, tears shining on their faces.

"Lily!" Adelia said. Her voice cracked. "Did you hear?"

Lily nodded. She couldn't speak. All she could think about was Sev.  _He'll be able to see Harriet after all_.

"How did it happen?" Adelia asked.

"I don't now." Lily's voice sounded far away. "Did you hear the bells? They're ringing bells in England."

"Yes." Adelia nodded. She scooped up a handful of letters. "One of these has to explain how it happened - they can tell us who go the son of bitch, at least." And she and the Auror began ripping the letters apart, scanning them, tossing them aside, throwing the scraps of parchment up in the air like confetti.

Lily went upstairs.

Harriet was still asleep. Lily really didn't want to wake her, so she pulled out the photographs of Sev - they were no longer the only two photographs in the album, of course, since in the past year she had filled it with pictures of Harriet and herself. The two Sevs gazed up at her from behind the glossy sheen of photographic paper.

"It's over," she said to them. "We did it. It's over."

The older Sev blinked at her. Lily began to cry: out of happiness, out of longing, out of everything she'd kept pressed down inside her since arriving at the safe house.

"You're free," she said.


	54. Snape

Severus rapped on the door to Dumbledore's office. His hand shook. His hand had been shaking for the last three days, ever since Halloween, ever since his spell worked, ever since the war ended.

_Lily's safe_ , he told himself.  _That's all that matters_.

"Come in!"

Dumbledore's voice was bright with cheeriness. The sound of it made Severus's skin crawl.

"You called for me?" he asked, keeping his voice low.

Dumbledore was sitting behind his desk, plucking out lemon drops from a glass bowl. He glanced up when Severus entered, and his blue eyes sparkled.

_The old bastard. He's been waiting for this for months_. Severus scowled at him.

"Is Lily safe?" Severus asked. "And Ha - Harriet?"

"Of course. They're still at the safe house, although she did, apparently, write to Remus and ask him to divulge her location." Dumbledore offered the glass bowl. "Lemon drop?"

Severus glared at him. "Remus?" he asked. "Remus fucking Lupin? Her Secret-Keeper was that fucking mangy  _werewolf_ \- "

"He kept her secret," Dumbledore said reasonably. "Well, at least until she told him it was no longer necessary. Apparently she asked Remus to tell  _you,_ but -"

A strange current of emotion jolted through Severus. A shudder at the thought of the werewolf seeking him out, a spark of warmth that Lily still wanted him.

"But he wouldn't deign to tell a Death Eater?" Severus snapped. "I haven't seen him."

"No," Dumbledore said. "I told him I would relate the information on to you." Dumbledore paused. "And you aren't a Death Eater."

"I was," said Severus, "and that's enough to warrant sending me to Azkaban." He sneered. "I read the papers, too,  _Albus_."

Dumbledore's eyes widened - a hint of surprise beneath all that calm benevolence. Severus blinked, unsure what to make of it.

"Severus," Dumbledore said softly, "did you really think I would let them lock you away?"

"Yes."

Dumbledore tilted his head, gazed at Severus appraisingly. Severus looked down at his hands. Still shaking. It was fear. He knew what the Dementors were capable of. He had seen it happen.

"Severus," Dumbledore said. "Do you know how Voldemort was defeated?"

Severus jerked his head up. He smoothed down his robes. "Read something in the papers," he said. "Something about the boy surviving the killing curse."

"Yes." Dumbledore leaned back in his chair, stroked his beard. "The consensus seems to be the boy has some great power - he was the subject of the prophecy, after all."

Severus didn't say anything.

"However," Dumbledore went on. "I have reason to believe that Voldemort is not truly defeated - he will return -"

"How could you possibly know that?"

"I have my ways. He'll return, and the boy will defeat him then. That's what the prophecy referred to. No, I believe something else defeated Voldemort three nights ago." He paused. "Something Darker."

Severus did not move.

"Neville's mother died," Dumbledore said. "Alice. They found her laying in front of his crib, stretched out, as if to protect him. What do you say about that, Severus?"

Severus could tell from the lines crinkling around Dumbledore's eyes that he knew. He knew and he disapproved. Rage billowed up inside Severus's chest.

"It sounds to me," he said, "that she sacrificed herself out of love."

Now it was Dumbledore's turn not to speak, to merely stare back at Severus with that infuriating calmness.

"The Dark Arts are rooted in sacrifice," Severus said, "not evil."

"They're evil because they are rooted in sacrifice."

"Oh, shut up," Severus said. "Of course it was a Dark spell that defeated the Dark Lord. It would have to be. He cast a Dark curse. A weak one, but Dark nonetheless." Severus took a deep breath.

"Alice Longbottom does not practice Dark magic."

"Obviously," Severus snarled, "she did."

Dumbledore and Severus stared at each other over the desk. Dumbledore's eyes were bright blue. Severus still thought he was going to Azkaban.

"Severus," Dumbledore said. "Thank you."

For a moment the room seemed to fill with light. Severus's mouth dropped open.

He was stunned into silence.

Dumbledore reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a white trainer. He set it on the desk.

"That a portkey to Azkaban?" Severus asked. He couldn't help himself.

"You're not going to Azkaban," Dumbledore said. "You're a hero."

Severus snorted.

"You know where it'll take you," Dumbledore said, and something in his voice made Severus's heart twist. He stared across the desk, straight into Dumbledore's bright blue eyes.

"You can stay until the holiday finishes," Dumbledore said. "You won't be going to Azkaban as long as you're employed here at Hogwarts. Do you understand? I can't guarantee your safety unless you're under my protection."

Severus scowled at Dumbledore's words, but his thoughts were a thousand miles away, with Lily.

"I understand," he said, and then he laid his hand on the trainer.

* * *

The beach was cold, the wind damp with sea spray. Sand clung to the hem of Severus's robe. Dunes rose before him, and a trickle of grey smoke rose from behind them.

"Lily?" Severus called out. His voice disappeared on the wind.

_She's at a safe house_ , Severus thought.  _The smoke_. And he pushed forward, plodding through the dunes, ocean waves roaring in his ears.

He didn't quite believe he was going to see Lily. He didn't quite believe this wasn't some trick, that he wasn't plodding his way toward Azkaban.

The cottage appeared through the dunes, white-washed and covered in vines. Severus walked up onto the porch and knocked.

A woman with a scar running down the length of her face answered. She narrowed her eyes at him.

"I'm here to see Lily," Severus said. His voice came out Death Eater dark, but inside he was trembling.

The woman stared at him for a second. Then she said, "You're the father."

Severus opened his mouth, closed it when he realized he didn't know what to say.

"I can see you in her," the woman said.

"You can?" Severus asked. "Harriet? She looks like me?"

The woman gave him a cold half-smile. "I mean Lily. I can see you in Lily." She jerked her head back. "She's in the greenhouses. You can cut around the side."

The woman closed the front door. Severus stood on the porch, the wind rippling his cloak. He didn't move. Nearly two years had passed. That was a very long time. It was possible she didn't even want him anymore.

_No_ , he thought.  _She asked for me_.

Or maybe this was some Dumbledore trick, maybe the greenhouses would whirl him away to Azkaban -

He stepped of the porch, walked around the side of the house.

There were two greenhouses, pale against the grey October sky. An empty garden stretched between them. Severus saw a flash of movement in the closest greenhouse, and his heart tightened inside his chest.

He let his shields fall away, and his anxiety strengthened.

He pulled the greenhouse door open. There she was, at the other end, her back to him, her hair twisted into a long shining braid. She was hunched over one of the tables, plants spraying out all around her.

Severus tried to call out her name but he found he couldn't speak.

Lily wiped her hands on the back of her jeans. She picked something up from the table in front of her and turned around.

When she saw Severus, the pot of autumn flowers she'd been holding crashed to the ground.

For a few long seconds, they only stared at each other.

Then Lily said, "Sev?" and rushed forward, her hair working its way out of her braid. She threw her arms around Severus with such force that she knocked the breath out of him, and then she was kissing him all over, on his neck and his lips and his cheeks. Her face was wet.

"Sev," she said again, burying her face into his neck. "I was afraid you wouldn't come."

That broke Severus out of the spell of shock. "Why wouldn't I come?" he asked, and then he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her as close to his body as he could. He buried his nose in her hair and smelled lavender and soil and the salt of the sea. She was still crying, but she was laughing too. She didn't answer his question, just kissed him again and again and again.

Severus let his shields drop completely. Happiness flooded in as bright as the sun. All that happiness made him dizzy.

Lily pulled away. "Do you want to see her?" she asked.

"Harriet?"

Lily nodded and smiled. "She's over by the rosebushes."

"She's here?" Severus blinked. His heart pounded. "Dumbledore gave me a picture, but I -"

Lily was halfway down the greenhouse. Severus trailed behind her, still dazed from being able to touch her, to feel her soft body against his. She bent down beside the empty rosebushes and pulled out a little plaid bundle. His baby, swaddled up in infant Muggle clothes.

Lily met him in the middle of the greenhouse, Harriet pressed against her chest. She had a thatch of dark hair.

"She looks like you," Lily said, rocking Harriet onto her back. Her face was pale and her eyes were green.

"Don't say that." At least her nose was just a little pale bump.

Lily gave him an exasperated look. "Do you want to hold her?"

"What?" Severus shook his head. "No, no, what if I drop her?"

"You won't drop her." Lily foisted Harriet into his arm.

Severus felt a sudden calm he hadn't known since he was a child. He could hardly believe that Harriet was a part of him, she was so beautiful, so beautiful and full of light like her mother. He held her gingerly, afraid to move, afraid his darkness would seep into her and bring her to ruin.

Harriet blinked like she didn't know what to make of him.

"She knows," Lily whispered, her hands resting on Severus's waist, her head leaned up against his shoulder. "She knows your her father."

Severus didn't believe that for a second, but even so, he began to cry, a few wayward tears born of happiness.

* * *

Lily led Severus up the stairs of the safe house, Harriet's wicker basket hanging from the crook of her arm. Severus kept his focus on that basket. Every time it wobbled, every time it swung back and forth, his heart lurched.

But they made it to Lily's bedroom without incident.

Lily lifted Harriet out of her basket and laid her on the bed, then went through the process of changing her diaper, her movements quick and practiced. Severus watched the process with alarm.

"All better?" Lily cooed to Harriet, then kissed her on the forehead. She scooped Harriet off the bed and deposited her in the crib over in the corner of the room. Then she pulled out her wand and Conjured a tiny solar system, planets and asteroids all moving around and around a sun the size of a golf ball. Harriet laughed and reached toward to it.

"She loves that," Lily whispered.

Severus didn't say anything. He just stared at Harriet, her face lit up by that enchanted sun.

Lily slipped her hand into Severus's and pulled him to her side. "Come on," she whispered, tugging him toward the door.

"You'll just leave her in here?" Severus asked. "Is that advisable? What if she falls out? What if -"

Lily pointed at a tiny white star that had drifted away from the solar system and hovering near her head. "This lets me know what's going on in the room," she said, smiling. "It's tuned to her emotions. If she gets upset in any way, it lets me know. Harriet will be  _fine_." She kissed Severus on the mouth, her hand trailing down the side of his hip. "I've missed you," she breathed against his neck, and Severus knew immediately exactly the sort of way she'd missed him.

She led him out of the room, the star floating beside her head. They went across the hall, into an empty bedroom. It smelled musty and unused. Lily locked the door with the wand and pulled Severus close to her body and kissed him, her hands working at his robes, her breath hot and damp against his skin.

"I've missed you," Lily whispered again, and then Severus stopped thinking. He lifted her up by the waist and shoved her up against the wall. They did not stop kissing. He Banished her jeans away, which made her laugh, and then then he sliced her panties away, which made her moan. Everything about her was brand new and familiar at the same time: her touch, her kisses, her body pressing against his.

And then he was inside her. She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him in deeper, and he buried his face in her neck and his Occlumency disappeared, shattered by pleasure. All the emotions of the past twenty years, all the fear and rage, the bitterness and hatred, were transforming inside of him. He'd had her and he lost her and now he had her again, because she waited for him, because she  _loved_ him, even after all this time spent apart. It was almost too much to bear.

When he came, his darkness turned to a light so bright it blinded.


	55. Lily

Lily woke up later that night to find the bed empty. She had fallen asleep in Sev's arms, the way she had so many times that winter two years ago. It had been easy to readjust to having him in her bed - easier than it had been to readjust to sleeping alone.

A Patronus was sitting beside the bed, casting silvery light over the room.  _Her_ Patronus, in fact. A doe. Lily sat up, her heart pounding, afraid that all her happiness had been ripped away -

The doe spoke in Sev's soft voice.

_Lily,_ it said.  _Dumbledore taught me how to do this._

"It's mine," she said, clutching at the bed sheets.

_I love you_ , the doe said, and then Lily remembered how George Langley's Patronus had started taking the form of an eagle after she started dating Matilda Lockhart.

Lily's heart swelled so big it hurt.

_I'm on the beach_ , the doe said.  _I couldn't sleep, and I didn't want to bother you_.

"I can't sleep without you," Lily said.

_Nonsense_. But there was a hint of amusement in the voice. Lily swung out of bed and dressed, pulling on her jeans and a jumper and a jacket and boots.

_You don't have to_ -

Harriet began to wail.

_What's wrong? Is something the matter? Did someone hurt -_

"You woke her up," Lily said. "It's no matter, now I can bring her out too." And she scooped Harriet out of the crib and pressed her up against her chest. Harriet stopped crying immediately, just gurgled and pointed at Sev's Patronus.

"See?" Lily said. "She wants to be with her father."

Sev's doe, somehow, managed to scowl, before it dissipated into sparkles of white light. Lily laughed.

She dressed Harriet and wrapped her in a quilt. It was cold out, the air tinged with frost. She followed the path to the sea and found Sev sitting near the dunes, far from the water's edge. He'd spread out his cloak over the sand, and he sat with his knees pressed against his chest. He looked like moonlight.

"You didn't have to come out here," he said, lifting his head toward them. "And God, you shouldn't have brought her out here, too. What if she catches pneumonia?"

"A wizard worrying about pneumonia?" Lily sat beside him on his cloak. Harriet reached for his hair. She managed to grab a clump in her tiny pale fist. Severus tilted his head toward her but didn't otherwise move.

"It's a wonder she's still healthy," Sev said. "If you're willing to parade her around in the cold like this."

Lily untangled his hair from Harriet's fingers and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "You worry too much."

Sev scowled. Lily had missed that scowl so much. She hadn't realized until now, seeing it on  _his_ face, in real life, not in a photograph or on a Patronus. She nestled Harriet between their bodies and leaned over to kiss him. He kissed back without hesitation, his hand sliding through her hair.

When they pulled apart, Lily lay her head on his shoulder. Harriet babbled and tugged at her blanket. The ocean rolled in across the sand.

"How's Hogwarts?" Lily asked.

"Dreadful. The students make constant demands of me and the best of them is still unable to rise above mediocracy." God, had Lily even missed his constant  _bitching_? It appeared that she had. "The parents are worse, and I imagine they'll be near unmanageable once classes resume. The Slytherin parents, I mean. I get letters everyday about their little darlings. I've half a mind to burn most of them."

Lily laughed and snuggled up closer to him.

"I have to stay, you know," Sev said. "At Hogwarts."

Lily heart twinged.  _No,_ she thought.  _You're supposed to become a famous potion inventor, and we'll live at your house in Spinner's End and teach Harriet magic before she's of-age and -_

"To keep me out of Azkaban," Severus said flatly.

"Oh." She frowned out at the sea. The word  _Azkaban_ rattled around inside her head. "Do you mean you to have to stay in hiding -"

"No," Sev said gently. "Of course not. I have to stay employed at Hogwarts. It puts me under Dumbledore's protection. I'm allowed to leave for the summers, of course, and the winter holiday if I request it. And I would." He turned his head, pressed his face against her hair. "I would."

Lily curled her hand around his. "It's not so bad. Harriet and I can live in Hogsmeade, and you can sneak out at night like we used to do when we were students."

Sev laughed, and then then he kissed her. She knew he didn't want to talk about it, about how their lives together that would be spent apart.

She lay her head back down on his shoulder. For a long time, they sat there without speaking. Harriet fell back asleep on the sand, her breath making her tiny body rise and fall against Lily's thigh.

"Sev," Lily said quietly. "Can I ask you a question?"

"There's no spell stopping you."

"Alice Longbottom," Lily said, and she felt him tense beside her. "I heard she sacrificed herself to save her son. And that's why lived."

"And where did you hear that?"

Lily didn't answer. The truth was it had come from Dumbledore - a snowy owl carrying a simple folded letter charmed to be read only by her.  _Dark magic saved us that night in Godric's Hollow._ And she'd known it had been Sev. Somehow, he'd arranged it.

"When I heard that," Lily said, "I thought about two things you taught me."

Sev looked out at the sea.

"The Dark Arts are sacrificial magic," she said. "And that they only way to defeat them is through love."

" _One_  of the only ways."

"A sacrifice made out of love must be rather powerful," Lily went on, choosing her words carefully. "Don't you think?"

For a long time Sev didn't answer. Lily listened to the waves and the wind.

"I would die to protect Harriet," Sev said, "And I would die to protect you."

Lily felt a chill go through her. It wasn't from the cold. She didn't know what it was from. She thought of a thing her mother used to say, a Muggle superstition -  _Someone walking over your grave_.

"So would I," she whispered. "So would I."


	56. Epilogue

"Mummy, it's almost three o'clock! Why isn't Daddy here yet?"

Lily glanced up from cake she was desperately trying to finish icing. She'd already smeared half of the  _Welcome_ in  _Welcome Home_ , but it was more for her edification that she get the cake right than for his. Sev really wasn't the sort to notice cakes.

"Well, it's a bit of a walk from the castle, darling." Lily squinted up her face in concentration and drew a last little decorative swirl of dark icing across the bottom of the cake.  _Welcome Home, Daddy!_  was sprawled lopsided across the top. She sighed and dropped the icing applicator in the sink. The cake had been Harriet's idea; she was seven years old and this was the sixth welcome-home dinner they'd had since the end of the war. The dinners had gotten significantly more elaborate as Harriet got older.

"Can I see?" Harriet wormed her way between Lily and the counter, standing up on her tiptoes to peer at the cake. "It's  _beautiful_ , Mummy."

"Thanks." Lily leaned down and kissed Harriet on the top of the head. She had Sev's hair, dark and glossy when it was freshly washed, as it was now.

"Why didn't you use magic to put the icing on? Like Mrs. Ladmore does?" Harriet asked.

"I couldn't get it to work properly. Did you get your sign hung up?"

Harriet jumped a little and said, "Oh!" and then bolted out of the kitchen - but not before swiping her finger along the bottom of the cake to wipe away a little taste of icing. Lily sighed and used her wand to smooth over the bare spot. Then she covered the cake and left the kitchen, warm from the yellow summer sun pouring through the windows and from the heat of the oven. She always baked a chicken with basil and lemons for his welcome-home dinners. She'd done it the first year, when Harriet was two years old and wild with the mania of toddlers, when the separation from Sev had still felt like an extension of wartime. From there it had settled into tradition.

The bright scent of lemon filled the cottage as Lily made her way to the front door, where Harriet was balancing on top of a step stool to hang a sign she'd spent the last few days making out of construction paper and paint that Lily had bought for her from a Muggle store - a consolation prize for not being allowed to do magic yet. The sign flapped a little in the breeze trickling in through the open windows, flashing color like a kaleidoscope.

Harriet jumped down from the stepping stool and admired her work. Like the writing on the cake, the sign hung a little crooked, but Harriet didn't seem notice and Lily knew Sev wasn't going to care.

"When is he getting here?" Harriet asked, stamping her foot.

"He has a lot to do at the end of the term," Lily said. "Patience, my dear."

Harriet sighed and an over to the window, leaned up against the sill, squinted into the sun.

"Why don't we go wait out in the garden," Lily suggested. She checked the clock: a little after three. He always came home at 3:15 three days after the Hogwarts express left Hogsmeade Station. Three days ago, Lily had been in the garden, pulling weeds from a patch of tomato plants, and she had seen the pale trickle of smoke against the blue sky, heard the distant call of the whistle. Her heart had fluttered like she was a teenager again.

Out in the garden, she Transfigured garden chairs out of the grass and the ivy vines twining around the big sprawling oak tree. She and Harriet sat down and waited, Harriet bouncing up and down in her seat. Lily checked her watch constantly. It was true that Sev came home most weekends, hauling stacks of essays in an extension-charmed briefcase which he usually didn't bother to grade, opting instead to show Harriet simple spells in the living room, or kissing Lily in their bedroom as the twilight fell, in those lovely movements before he had to make his way back to the school.

But summer was different. Summer was the time their lives were what Lily always hoped for. She wasn't sad during the school year, but during the summer she knew for certain what happiness was.

At the end of the walkway leading to their cottage, a man appeared against the blue sky. Black hair, black robes

"Daddy!" Harriet shrieked, and she leapt out of her chair and raced through the garden before Lily could say anything. Lily watched as Harriet flew down the path, her pale summer robes streaming out behind her like the wind. Sev bent down and pulled Harriet into an embrace and then allowed her to drag him up the walkway. He was empty-handed; his chest of belongings had probably appeared in their bedroom a few seconds earlier, the way they always did.

Lily checked her watch. Three-fifteen. The same time every year.

Sev walked into the garden, Harriet chattering excitedly beside him. He tilted his head a little, listening to her, nodding along. But his eyes were on Lily, dark and intense. She had seen him a week ago, meeting him for lunch at the pub in Hogsmeade, but in this moment the sunlight was warm and bright around them, and the air was sweet with the scent of flowers. It was a dream. It was happiness.

Lily stood up. Sev pulled a small silver-edged box out of his pocket and gave it to Harriet, crouching down in the grass to show her how it worked. She listened to the instructions intently, her expression the same as Sev's whenever he worked on his potions. Lily's chest tightened.

"Go on," Sev said, straightening up. "Try it out. Behind the cottage!" he added as Harriet disappeared inside. Then he looked at Lily.

"What'd you give her?"

"Oh, just a little trinket I made." He shrugged, walked over to her, pulled her close. They didn't kiss, just stood there in each other's arms. Lily breathed in the scent of him.

"Another three months," Sev said.

"Another three months."

In a few moments' time, they would eat the chicken with the basil and lemons, they would cut into the cake, they would listen to Sev tell stories about the school year. They would let Harriet stay up late that night, and when she finally fell asleep, Sev would carry her up to her bed and Lily would take down her sign, folding it into careful quarters. She and Sev would remember the lines of each other's bodies. The days would carry on, the summer warm and indolent. Their entire life would unravel from this point, and it would be a life spent together, a life where Sev was not a Death Eater, where Lily was not dead.

That was the future. But right now, in the present, she kissed him, and together they melted into sunlight.

The End


End file.
